Prelude for War

1

The man who had been bending over Lady Valerie straightened up. He was slim and sallow, with black hair plastered down over his head until it looked as if it had been waxed. He had quick darting eyes and a sly slinking manner; his movements were abrupt and silent, like those of a lizard. One could imagine him lurking in dark corners for sinister purposes.

The Saint smiled at Lady Valerie as the lizard-like man withdrew his hand and her face became visible. The first expression on her face was a light of joy and relief; and then when she saw that he kept his hands up and saw the ape-faced man follow him in with the silenced revolver screwed into his back, it changed through stark unbelief to hopeless dejection.

"Hullo, darling," he said. "You do have some nice friends, don't you?"

She didn't respond. She sat there and stared at him reproachfully: she seemed to be deeply disappointed in him. Simon realized that there was some excuse for her, but she would have to endure.her unfounded disappointment for a little while longer.

He transferred his smile to the automatic and the cigarette.

"Nice weather we've been having, haven't we?" he murmured, keeping the conversational ball rolling single-handed.

This other man was bigger, and there was an air of conscious arrogance about him. He had the cold, intolerant eyes and haughty moustache of a Prussian guardsman. He gazed back at Simon with fishlike incuriosity and made a gesture with his cigarette at the sallow man.

"Disarm and search him, Dumaire."

"So your name is Dumaire, is it?" said the Saint politely. "May I compliment you on your coiffure? I've never seen floor polish used on the head before. And while this is going on, won't you introduce me to your uncle?"

Dumaire said nothing; he simply proceeded to do what he was told and run through the Saint's pockets. Keys, cigarette case, lighter, money, handkerchief, wallet, fountain pen — he took out the commonplace articles one by one and laid them on a small table in front of the man who appeared to be in charge. While he was waiting for the collection to be assembled the latter answered Simon's question.

"If it is of any interest to you," he said, "I am Major Bravache, a divisional commander of the Sons of France, about whom I think you said something just now."

He spoke English excellently, with only a trace of native accent.

"How perfectly splendid," said the Saint slowly. "But do you know what bad company you're in? This bird behind me, for instance, with the peashooter boring into my backbone, whatever he may have told you, I happen to know that his real name is Sam Pietri and he has done three sentences for robbery with violence."

He felt the harmless gun quiver involuntarily against his spine and chuckled inwardly over the awful anguish that must have been twinging through the tissues of the ape-faced man, not only compelled to be an impotent accomplice in snaring fresh victims into the net of his own downfall, but suffering the aftermath of a maltreated skull as well. Simon would have given much for a glimpse of his guardian's face, but he hoped that it was not betraying anything to the opposition. Fortunately, no one was paying any attention to Pietri. Dumaire, his job done, was leaning against the wall and watching Lady Valerie with reptilian eyes in which the only discernible expression had a brazen lewdness that quite plainly revealed his chief preoccupation; Bravache had simply ignored the Saint's last remarks as if he had not heard them. He was busily turning over the things on the table before him. He gave his most detailed attention to the wallet, and he had hardly started on it when a gleam of triumph flowed into his cold eyes. He held up a scrap of buff paper with a large number printed on it.

"Ah!" he said, with a deep satisfaction that was exaggerated by his slightly foreign handling of words. "The ticket. That is excellent!"

As a matter of fact, it was a ticket in an impromptu sweepstake organized over the week end in Peter Quentin's favourite pub on the outskirts of Anford; but the Saint had known that it was there, and had left it there with the deliberate object of leading the comedy on as far as it would go in the hope of finding out exactly what was meant to be the end of it before he was forced to show his hand.

He waited to see how far his hope would be fulfilled. Valerie Woodchester's eyes were like saucers: they looked at first as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing; and then a veiled half-comprehending, half-perplexed expression passed over them which Simon hoped nobody would see. Bravache folded the ticket carefully and put it in his own wallet. Then he looked at Lady Valerie, and again the limp cigarette dangled between his fingers.

"We are very grateful, my dear lady," he said. "You have done a great service to the Sons of France. The Sons of France do not forget services. In future you will be under our protection." He paused, smiling, and there was something wolfish about his smile. "Should anything happen to you — should you, for instance, be murdered by one of our enemies — you will be immediately avenged."

An arpeggio of spooky fingers stroked up the Saint's back into the roots of his hair. In spite of Bravache's stilted phrasing, the almost farcical old-fashioned melodrama in which his tongue rolled itself gloatingly around every word, there was something in his harsh voice that was by no means farcical, something which in combination with that wolfish smile was made more deeply horrible by the unreality of its enunciation. Simon realized for the first time in his life, in spite of everything he had believed, that it was actually possible for a villain to speak like that, in grotesquely serious conformity with the standard caricature of himself, and still keep the quality of terror: it was, after all the jokes were over, the natural self-expression of a certain type of man — a man who was cruel and unscrupulous and egotistical in too coarse a vein to play cat-and-mouse with the dignity that subtleness might give it, and yet whose vanity demanded that travesty of subtleness, and whose total lack even of the saving grace of humour made it possible for him to play the travesty with a perfectly straight face and made the farce more gruesome in the process. In that revealing instant the Saint had an insight into the mentalities of all the glorified Jew-baiters and overblown petty tyrants whose psychology had baffled him before.

He said lightly: "That'll be fun for you, won't it, Valerie?"

Bravache looked back at him, and again his eyes were cold and fishy.

"You have been attempting to discover the secrets of the Sons of France in order to betray them to our enemies," he said. "The penalty for that, as you know, is death."

"You must have been reading a book," said the Saint admiringly. "Or was that Luker's idea?"

The vulpine twist that was meant to be a smile remained on the other man's thin lips.

"I am acquainted with Mr Luker only as a sympathizer and supporter of our ideals to whom I have the honour to be attached as personal aide," he replied. "Your crime has been committed against an organization of patriots known as the Sons of France, of which I am an officer. You are now the prisoner of the Sons of France. We have been informed that you are an unprincipled mercenary employed by the bandits of Moscow to spy upon and betray our organization. Of that I have sufficient proof." He tapped the pocket where he had replaced his wallet with the sweepstake ticket in it. "It also appears that you have threatened Lady Valerie Woodchester, who is our friend. Therefore if you were to murder her, it would naturally be our duty to avenge her."

Simon's arms were beginning to ache and stiffen from being held up so long. But inside he felt timelessly relaxed, and his mind was a cold pattern of crystalline understanding.

"You mean," he said unemotionally, "that the idea is to kill both of us, and arrange it so that you can try to spread the story that I murdered Lady Valerie and that the Sons of France killed me to avenge her."

"I am sure that the theory will find wide acceptance," answered Bravache complacently. "Lady Valerie is young and beautiful, whereas you are a notorious criminal. I think that a great many people will applaud our action, and that even the British police themselves will feel a secret relief which will tend to handicap their inquiries."

The Saint glanced at Lady Valerie. Her face had been blank with stupefaction; now it was drawn and frightened. Her big brown eyes were fixed on him in mute and hypnotized entreaty.

"I told you you had charming friends, darling," Simon remarked.

He studied Bravache with cold-blooded interest. He felt that in the space of a few minutes he had come to know the man intimately, that he could take his soul apart and lay out all its components. How much of what Bravache had said was genuine fanaticism, or genuine self-deception, however wilful, he could not judge; in that kind of neurotic, the blend of idealism and conscienceless rationalization became so homogeneous that it was practically impossible to draw a sharp cleavage. But he was not so much interested in the man individually as in the type, the matrix in which all the petty satraps of tyranny are cast. He had known it in Red Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, and had known the imaginative horror of conceiving of life under a dynasty in which liberty and life itself lay at the caprice of men from that mould. Now he was finding the imprint of the same die on a Frenchman, the chilling prototypical hallmark of the breed from which secret police and authorized persecutors are recruited; and it gave him a grimmer measure of the thing he had set out to fight than anything else hitherto had done. If the Sons of France had progressed far enough to develop officers like Major Bravache, the wheels must be turning with nightmare speed…

"It all sounds very neat and jolly, my dear Major Cochon," he admitted. "Do we start right away?"

"I think we had better do so," said Bravache, still smiling with a face of marble. "We have already wasted enough time." He turned his head. "Dumaire, you know what to do. We will leave you to do it." He looked at the Saint again, with his lips drawn back from his white even teeth. "You, Mr Templar, will accompany Pietri and myself. If you resist or try to obstruct us you will be shot at once. I advise you to come quietly. I am hoping that as a reasonable man you will agree that the prospect of death in a number of hours is preferable to the certainty of death immediately. Besides" — the gleam of the white teeth was feline — "as a gentleman, you will not wish to deprive me of the opportunity to answer some of your remarks which I have not had time to deal with here."

The Saint smiled.

"By no manner of means," he said. "Only I should rather like to take charge of the interview myself at this point — if you don't mind."

He stepped aside and backwards, and took hold of Pietri by the ear. The movement was so improbable and unexpected that it was completed before either Bravache or Dumaire could reorient their wits sufficiently to do anything about it. And by that time Pietri was securely held, like a writhing urchin in the grip of an old-fashioned schoolmarm, so that his body was between the Saint and Bravache, who was still trying to make up his mind whether to grab for the automatic which he had confidently left lying on the table a yard away.

Bravache's poise broke for a moment.

"Use your gun, you fool!" he thundered.

"He can't," said the Saint. "You tell them why, Sam."

An extra turn on the piece of gristle he was holding made his victim squeak like a mouse.

"There's nothing in it," wailed Pietri, with the revolver quivering futilely in his grasp. "They caught me outside — him and two other fellows—"

Bravache started to move then, and Simon's voice ripped out like a lash.

"I wouldn't," he said. "Really I wouldn't. It's dangerous."

And as he spoke Peter and Hoppy came through the doorway.

Bravache stood very still. His face was cold and unmoved, but the veins on the backs of his clenched hands stood out in knotty blue cords. Dumaire, caught with one hand at the edge of his coat pocket, prudently let it fall back to his side. He flattened himself against the wall like a cornered rat, with his shoulders hunched up to the jaw level of his small ebony-capped head.

Simon released Pietri and strolled over to pick up Bravache's automatic and retrieve his cigarette case and lighter from among his strewn belongings on the table. With a cigarette between his lips and the lighter wick burning steadily, he looked at Bravache with cerulean mockery in his eyes.

"I'm hoping that as a reasonable man you will agree that the prospect of death in a number of hours is preferable to. the certainty of death immediately," he said in a voice of satin. "Go on, Major, I don't want anything to interrupt our little chat."

2

The chat appeared to have been interrupted already so far as Major Bravache was concerned. At any rate, he seemed disinclined to accept the Saint's invitation to proceed with his discourse. Or else the founts of eloquence had dried up within him. His lips closed down over his teeth until there was only a straight line to show where his mouth had been.

The Saint left him with a quizzically regretful shrug and turned to untie Lady Valerie. She stood up and stretched herself, rather like a cat by the fire, and rubbed her chafed wrists. Then she went over to the table where her bag was, in search of the ineluctable restoratives of feminine sangfroid.

"You gave me some bad moments," she said, with an attempted nonchalance in which he could still see the signs of strain like carefully darned edges on a poor man's cuffs. "For a long time I was thinking you'd let me down, but of course I ought to have remembered that you never let anyone down."

"What happened?" he asked.

She appeared from behind a card-sized mirror to point with the scarlet tip of a lipstick.

"He rang the bell and said you'd sent him round with something special to give me. I thought it was a bit funny, since we'd only said good-bye a little while ago, and he was a rather funny-looking person, but after all I thought a lot of funny things must go on in this life of crime, and I was quite intrigued. I mean, I just didn't think enough about how funny it was. So I started to let him in, and then these other two followed him in very quickly and there wasn't anything I could do. They tied me up and searched everywhere. This one was very nasty — he thought I might have the ticket on me, and he didn't miss anything."

She gazed vindictively at Dumaire, who was then having his hands efficiently taped behind his back by Peter Quentin, and kicked him thoughtfully on the shins.

"Then they made you ring me up?" Simon prompted her.

"Well, when they couldn't find the ticket they said they'd do horrible things to me unless I told them where it was. So I told them I'd given it to you to look after, and I was quite glad to be able to ring you up by that time. I–I sort of knew you'd catch on at once, because you're so frightfully clever and that's how things always happen in stories."

"It makes everything so easy, doesn't it?" said the Saint satirically. "We must talk some more about that, but I think we'll talk alone."

He watched while the taping of the other prisoners' wrists was completed; then he started exploring doors. He found one that communicated with the bedroom — a place of glass and natural woods and pale blue sheets and pillows, with a pale blue bathroom beyond it that gave an infinitesimally humorous shift to the alignment of his eyebrows. He left the door open and signed to Peter.

"Bring the menagerie in here," he said.

Dumaire, Pietri and Bravache lurched sullenly in, urged on by the unarguable prodding of gun muzzles.

On his way in after them, Hoppy Uniatz stopped at the door. It is true, as has perhaps already been made superfluously clear, that there were situations in which the light of intelligence failed to coruscate on Mr Uniatz' ivorine brow; it is no less true that in the vasty oceans of philosophy and abstract Thought he wandered like a rudderless barque at the mercy of unpredictable winds; but in his own element he was immune to the distractions that might have afflicted lesser men, and his mental processes became invested with the simplicity of true greatness.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz, with the placidity of a mahatma approaching the settlement of an overdue grocer's bill, "I t'ink ya better gimme dem shells."

"What shells?" asked the Saint hazily.

"De shells," explained Mr Uniatz, who was now flourishing Pietri's silenced revolver in addition to his own beloved Betsy, "you take outa de dumb cannon."

Simon blinked.

"What for?"

"Dey don't make no ners," explained Mr Uniatz, with a slight perplexity for such slowness on the uptake, "when we are giving dese guys de woiks."

The Saint swallowed.

"I'll give them to you when you need them," he said and closed the door hastily on Mr Uniatz' back.

He went back and sat on the arm of a chair in front of Lady Valerie. He wanted to smile, but he had too many other things on his mind that were not smiling matters. The recent episode which had been absorbing all his nervous and intellectual energy was over, and his brain was moving on again with restless efficiency. It had not reached an end, but only a fresh beginning.

She had regained most of her composure. Her face was repaired, and she had lighted a cigarette herself. He had to admit that she possessed amazing recuperative powers. There was a naughty gleam in her eyes that would have amused him at any other time.

"You always seem to be catching me in these boudoir moments, don't you?" she said, smoothing her flimsy negligee. "I mean, first I was in my nightie at the fire, and then now. It must be fate, or something. The only trouble is, there won't be any thrills left when we get really friendly… Of course I suppose I ought to thank you for rescuing me," she went on hurriedly. "Thanks very much, darling. It was sweet of you."

"Don't mention it," he said graciously. "It's been a pleasure. You must call me again any time you want a helping hand."

He got up restlessly, poured himself out a drink and sat down again.

"Don't you think you'd better tell me what it's all about?" he said abruptly. "I could live through an explanation of this cloakroom-ticket gag."

"Oh, that," she said. She trimmed the end of her cigarette. "Well, you see, they thought I'd got a cloakroom ticket they wanted, so they came to look for it. That's all."

"It isn't anything like all," he said bluntly. "Why go on holding out on me? You've got something they want — probably some papers that Kennet gave you. You parked them in a cloakroom somewhere, and these birds knew it and wanted the ticket. Or do you want me to believe that they went to all this trouble simply to get a receipt for Luker's hat?"

She frowned at her knees, and then she shrugged.

"I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't know, since you've guessed already," she said. "As a matter of fact, I have got some papers. I thought Algy might like to know, so I just mentioned it to him casually on the telephone tonight."

"Meaning what I was talking to you about at the Berkeley."

"What was that?"

"Blackmail."

"I don't understand."

"Don't make me tired. You were trying to sell him those papers."

"After all," she said, "a girl has to live."

"How long do you think you'd have lived tonight if it hadn't been for me?"

She hesitated.

"How was I to know Algy would do anything like this?" she said sulkily. "I told him I'd put the papers in a cloakroom and I wasn't sure where they were. He rang me up later on, just before the monkey-man got here, and offered me ten thousand pounds if I'd bring them round to him right away, but I thought they might be worth more than that, so I pretended I still couldn't remember what I'd done with them. Of course I know where they are really."

The Saint's lips tightened.

"You poor little fly-brained moron," he exploded uncontrollably. "What makes you think you can cut in on a game like this? Haven't you had your lesson yet? You know what happened to Kennet and Windlay. You know what happened to you tonight. You heard what Bravache said. If I hadn't had everything organized, you were booked to go down the drain with me — plus any specialized unpleasantnesses that your boy friend Dumaire could think of. Is that your idea of a good time?"

She shuddered almost imperceptibly.

"I know, that wasn't very nice. I never was one of those heroines who don't think life is worth living unless bullets are whizzing past their ears and ships sinking under them and houses crashing in ruins about their heads and all that sort of thing. Personally I'm all for a life of selfish self-indulgence, and I don't care who knows it. If I could get a decent offer for those papers, I'd take it like a shot and skip off to Bermuda or somewhere and enjoy it. The trouble is, I don't know what they're worth. What do you think?"

She looked at him with limpid brown eyes big with artlessness.

"I'll give you a shilling for them," he said.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of selling them to you," she said innocently. "What I was thinking was that if I went to a fairly decent pub tonight — the Carlton, for instance, where I should be perfectly safe — and then I rang up Algy and told him he could have the papers for fifteen thousand pounds, he'd most likely do something about it. I mean, after what's happened tonight, he ought to consider himself damned lucky to get them for fifteen thousand. Don't you think so?"

"Very lucky," said the Saint, with fine-drawn patience. "Where are these papers at the moment?"

She smiled.

"They're in a cloakroom all right. I've got the ticket somewhere, only I forget exactly where. But I expect I'll remember all right when I have to."

"I expect you will," he said coldly. "Even if somebody like Dumaire has to help you."

Suddenly he got up and went over to her and took both her hands. The coldness fell out of his voice.

"Valerie, why don't you stop being an idiot and let me get into the firing line?"

She looked at him speculatively for a while, for quite a long while. Her hands were small and soft. He kept still, and heard a taxi rattle past the end of the street. But she shook her head.

"I'd like to," she said sadly. "Especially after what you've done for me tonight — although if it comes to that, I expect you simply love dashing about rescuing people and doing your little hero act, so perhaps you ought to be a bit grateful to me for giving you such a good chance to do your stuff. And after all, if I just handed over the papers to you, that wouldn't do much good, would it? Of course, if you wanted to buy them—"

"To hell with buying them! Haven't you found out yet that there are some things in life that you can't measure in money? Haven't you realized that this is one of them? I don't know what there is in those papers — maybe you don't know either. But you must know that things like you've seen tonight don't get organized over scraps of paper with noughts and crosses on them — that men like Bravache and Fairweather and Luker don't take to systematic murder to stop anybody reading their old love letters. These men are big. Anything that keeps them as busy as this is big. Ana I know what kind of bigness they deal in. The only way they can make what they call big money, the only way they can touch the power and glory that their perverted egos crave for, is in helping and schooling nations to slaughter and destroy. What hellish graft is at the back of this show called the Sons of France I don't know; but I can guess plenty of it. However it works, the only object it can have is to turn one more country aside from civilization so that the market can be kept right for the men who sell guns and gas. Or else Luker wouldn't be in it. And he must know that there's an odds-on chance of bringing it off, or else he still wouldn't be in it. This may be the last cog in a machine that will wipe out twenty million lives, and you might have the knowledge that would break it up before it gets going. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

She stood up slowly. And she freed her hands. "I think I'll be getting along now," she said, and her voice was quite steady in spite of the reluctance in it. "It's been a lovely party, but even the best of good times have to come to an end, and I need some sleep. Do you think you could move those men out of the bedroom while I put on some clothes?"

Simon looked at her.

The fire that had gone into his appeal was a glowing; ingot within him. It was a coiled spring that would drive him until it ran down, without regard for sentiment or obstacles. It was a power transformer for the ethereal vibrations of destiny. Earlier in the evening, the atmosphere of the Berkeley had defeated him; but this was not the Berkeley. He knew that there was only one solution, and there was too much at stake for him to hesitate. He was amazed at his own madness; and yet he was utterly calm, utterly resolute.

He nodded.

"Oh yes," he said. "I was going to move them anyway. I didn't think you'd want to keep them for domestic pets."

He went over and opened the bedroom door.

"Bring out the zoo," he said.

He stood there while the captives filed out, followed by Peter and Hoppy, and waited until the door had closed again behind the girl. For a few seconds he paced up and down the small room, intent on his own thoughts. Then he picked up the telephone and dialled the number of his apartment in Cornwall House.

Patricia answered the ring.

"Hullo, sweetheart," he said. His voice was level, too certain of its words to show excitement. "Yes… No trouble at all. Everything went according to plan, and we're all sitting pretty — except the deputation from the ungodly. Now listen. I've got a job for you. Call Orace and tell him to expect you. Then get out the Daimler, and tell Sam Outrell to pull Stunt Number Three. As soon as you're sure yon aren't followed, come over here. Hustle it… No, I'll tell you when you arrive. There are listeners… Okay, darling. Be seein' ya."

He put down the phone and turned to Bravache. The pupils of his eyes were like chips of flint.

"So you were going to kill Lady Valerie and blame it on to me," he said with great gentleness. "That was as far as we'd got, wasn't it? The Sons of France avenge the murder of one of their sympathizers, and all sorts of high-minded nitwits wave banners. Do you see any good reason why you shouldn't take some of your own medicine?"

"You daren't do it!" said Bravache whitely. "The Sons of France will make you pay for my death a hundred times!"

Dumaire's face was yellow with fear. Simon took him by the scruff of the neck and heaved him over to the window. He parted the curtains and pointed downwards.

"I suppose you came here in a car," he said. "Which of those cars is yours?"

The man shook like a leaf but did not answer.

Simon turned him round and hit him in the face. He held him by the lapels of his coat and brought him back to the window.

"Which of those cars is yours?"

"That one," blubbered Dumaire.

It was a small black sedan, far more suitable for the transport of unwilling passengers than the open Hirondel.

Simon released his informant, who tottered and almost fell when the Saint's supporting grip was removed. The Saint lighted another cigarette and spoke to Peter.

"You can use their car. Take them to Upper Berkeley Mews."

He looked up to find Hoppy Uniatz' questioning eyes upon him. There were times when Mr Uniatz had a tendency to fidget, and these times were usually when he felt that a very obvious and elementary move had been delayed too long. It was not that he was a naturally impatient man, but he liked to see things disposed of in the order of their importance. Now he grasped hopefully for the relief of the problem that was uppermost in his mind.

"Is dat where we give dem de woiks, boss?"

"That's where you give them the works," said the Saint. "Will you come outside for a minute, Peter?"

He took Peter out into the hall and gave him more detailed instructions.

"Did you hear enough while you were waiting to convince you that I haven't been raving?" he said.

"I always knew you couldn't be," Peter said sombrely, "because you sounded so much as if you were. I'm damned if I know how you do it, but it always seems to be the way."

"You'll see it through?"

"No," said Peter. "I'm going home to my mother." His face was serious in spite of the way he spoke. "But aren't you taking an unnecessary risk with Bravache and friend? Of course I'm not so bloodthirsty as Hoppy—"

The Saint drew at his cigarette.

"I know, old lad. Maybe I am a fool. But I don't see myself as a gangster. Do it the way I told you. And when you've finished, bring Hoppy back here and let him pick up the Hirondel and drive it down to Weybridge. You can stay in town and wait for developments — I expect there'll be plenty of them. Okay?"

"Okay, chief."

Simon's hand lay on Peter's shoulder, and they went back into the living room together. The Saint's new sureness was like a steel blade, balanced and deadly.

3

"You can't do this!" babbled Bravache. Little specks of saliva sprayed from his mouth with his words. "It is a crime! You will be punished — hanged. You cannot commit murder in cold blood. Surely you can't do that!" His manner changed, became fawning, wheedling. "Look, you are a gentleman. You could not kill a defenceless man, any more than I could. You have misunderstood my little joke. It was only to frighten you—"

"Put some tape on his mouth, Hoppy," ordered the Saint with cold distaste.

Pietri and Dumaire were gagged in the same way, and the three men were pushed on out of the flat and crowded into the lift. Simon left them with Peter and Hoppy in the foyer of the building while he went out to reconnoiter the car. It was nearly half-past two by his watch, and the street was as still and lifeless as a graveyard. The Saint's rubber-soled shoes woke no echoes as they moved to their destination. There was a man dozing at the wheel of the small black sedan and he started to rouse as the Saint opened the door beside him, but he was still not fully awake when the Saint's left hand reached in and took hold of him by the front of his coat and yanked him out like a puppy.

"Have you tried this for insomnia?" asked the Saint conversationally, and brought up his right hand in a smashing uppercut.

The man's teeth clicked together; his knees gave; he buckled forward without a sound, and Simon let him fall. He went back to the entrance of the building.

"All clear," he said in a low voice. "Make it snappy."

He led the way back to the black sedan and picked up his sleeping patient. There was a board fence on the opposite side of the road, above which rose the naked girders of another new apartment building under construction. Simon applied scientific leverage, and the patient rose into the air and disappeared from view. There was a dull thud in the darkness beyond.

Simon crossed the road again. The loading of freight had been completed with professional briskness while he was away. Already Peter Quentin was at the wheel; and Hoppy Uniatz, sitting crookedly beside him in the other front seat, was covering the three men who were bundled together in the back. The engine whirred under the starter.

Simon looked in at the prisoners, and particularly at the staring cringing eyes of Bravache.

"It won't hurt much, Major," he said, "and you ought to be proud to be a martyr for the flag… On your way, boys."

He stood and watched the receding taillight of the car until it turned the corner at the end of the street; and then he strolled slowly back to the entrance of the building. He waited there less than five minutes before a dark Daimler limousine swept into the street and drew up in front of the door.

The Saint leaned in the open window beside the driver and kissed her.

"What's been happening?" asked Patricia.

In a few sentences he let her know as much as he knew himself; and while he was speaking he rummaged in the nearest side pocket of the car. He found what he was looking for — a chauffeur's blue cap — and set it at an angle on her curly head.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said.

When he re-entered the flat Lady Valerie Woodchester was dressed. She came out of the bedroom carrying a small valise.

"What's happened to everyone?" she asked in surprise.

"Peter and Hoppy have removed the exhibits," he said irrepressibly. "They'll get what's coming to them somewhere else. We didn't want to make any more mess for you here."

The edges of pearly teeth showed on her underlip.

"Could you call me a taxi?"

"I could do better. I sent for one of my more ducal cars, and it's waiting outside now. You won't mind if I see you as far as the Carlton, will you? I don't want you to be put to the trouble of having to call me out again tonight."

For a moment he thought she was going to lose her temper, and almost hoped that she would. But she turned her back on him and sailed out into the corridor without a word. He followed her into the elevator, and they rode down in supercharged silence. At the door he helped her into the Daimler and settled himself beside her. The car moved off.

They drove a couple of blocks without a word being spoken. Lady Valerie stared moodily out of the window on her side, scowling and biting her lips. The Saint was bubbling inside.

"A penny for them," he said at last.

She turned on him with sudden fury and looked him wrathfully up and down.

"You make me sick!" She flared.

The Saint's eyebrows rose one reproachful notch.

"Me?" he protested aggrievedly. "But why, at the moment? What have I done now?"

She shook her shoulders fretfully.

"Oh… nothing," she said. "I'm fed up, that's all."

"I'm sorry," said the Saint gravely. "Perhaps you've had a dull evening. You ought to get about more — go places, and meet people, and see things. It makes a tremendous difference."

"You think you're very funny, don't you?" she flashed. "You and your blonde girl friend — the world's pet hero and heroine!" She paused, savouring the sting of her own acid. "She is nice looking — I'll give her that," she went on grudgingly. "But I just wish she'd never been born… Oh well, perhaps we can't all be heroines, but there's no reason why the rest of us shouldn't have a pretty decent time. You'll be a bit fed up yourself when Algy and Luker get those papers, won't you?"

"Are you quite sure you aren't going to give them to me?" he said.

She laughed.

"I suppose you think I ought to give them to you for saving my life," she jeered extravagantly. "With tears of gratitude streaming down my cheeks, I should stammer: 'Here they are — take them.' That's why you make me sick. You go about the place rescuing people and being the Robin Hood of modern crime, and then you go back to your blonde girl friend and have a grand time being told how wonderful you are. So you may be; but it just makes me sick."

"Well, if you feel sick, don't keep on talking about it — be sick," said the Saint hospitably. "Don't worry about the car — we can always have it cleaned."

She gave him a withering glare and turned ostentatiously away. She seemed to want to make it quite clear that his conversation was beneath her contempt and that even to endure his company was a martyrdom. She huddled as far away from him as the width of the seat permitted and resumed her scowling out of the window.

The Saint devoted himself to the tranquil enjoyment of his cigarette and waited contentedly for the climax which he knew must come before long.

It came after another five minutes.

All at once her eyes, fixed vacantly on the window, froze into a strange expression. She sat bolt upright.

"Here," she blurted. "What the… Where are we going? This isn't the way to the Carlton!"

Obviously it wasn't; they were down at the Chelsea end of the Embankment, heading west.

"Have you noticed that already?" said the Saint imperturbably. "How observant you are, darling. Now I suppose I can't keep my secret any longer. The fact is, I'm not taking you to the Carlton."

She caught her breath.

"You — you're not taking me to the Carlton? But I want to go to the Carlton! Take me there at once! Tell the chauffeur to turn round—"

She leaned forward and tried to hammer on the glass partition. Quite effortlessly the Saint pushed her back.

"Shut up," he said calmly. "You make me sick."

"W-what?" she said.

She stared at him with solemn wide-open eyes as if he were some strange monster that she was seeing for the first time.

"It's no use both of us being sick," he pointed out reasonably. "It would be a deafening duet."

"I don't know what good you think this is going to do you," she said haughtily. "If you think you're going to protect me, or anything like that—"

"Protect you?" he said, with bland incomprehension. "Who — me? Darling, that would never enter my head. I know you can look after yourself. But I want to take care of you for my own sake. You see, it wouldn't suit me at all if you sold those papers to Fairweather or Luker. I want them too much myself. So I just want to keep an eye on you until I get them."

"You — you mean you're kidnapping me?" she got out incredulously.

But somehow she did not sound quite so indignant.

"That's the idea," he said equably. "And it's my duty to tell you that if you try to scream or kick up any sort of fuss I shall have to take steps to stop you. Quite gentle steps, of course. I shall just knock you cold."

"Oh!" she said.

She was sitting up very straight, one hand on the seat beside her, the other clutching the armrest at her side. Simon lounged at ease in his own corner, but he was watching her like a hawk and his hands were ready for instant action. He had no wish to use violence, but he would have had no compunction about it if it became necessary. He was fighting for something bigger than stereotyped chivalry, something bigger than the incidental hurt of any individual. He was the point of a million bayonets.

For a long moment she went on staring at him, and there was something in her face that he could not understand.

Then her muscles relaxed and she sank limply back.

"I think you're an unspeakable cad," she said.

"I am," said the Saint cheerfully. "And I fairly wallow in it."

Her mouth moved slightly, so that by the dim light of passing street lamps it almost looked for one fleeting moment as though she were trying to stifle a smile. He reached over to crush his cigarette in the ash tray so as to glance at her more closely, but she moved further away from him, and the expression on her face was surly and disdainful. He lay back and stretched out his legs and appeared to go to sleep.

But he was awake and vigilant for every minute of the drive, while the car whispered out of Putney and out on to the Portsmouth Road and down the long hill into Kingston. They went on to Hampton Court, and turned off over the bridge along the road by Hurst Park; in Walton they turned right again, and a few miles later they turned under a brick archway into what seemed like a dense wood. A few more turns, and the car swung into a circular drive and swept its headlights across the front of a big weather-tiled house set in a grove of tall pines and silver birches.

They pulled up with a crunch of gravel, and Simon opened the door.

"Here we are, darling," he said. "This is my nearest country seat. Thirty minutes from London if you don't worry about speed cops, and you might as well be in the middle of the New Forest. You'll like the air, too, it has oxygen in it."

He picked up her valise and stepped out. As she got out after him she saw Patricia coming round the front of the car, pulling off her gloves, and her face went stony.

The Saint waved a casual hand.

"You remember Pat, don't you?" he murmured. "The girl with the wardrobe you liked so much. She'll chaperon you while you're here and see that you have most of the things you want. Come along up and I'll show you your quarters."

He led the way into the house, handing over the valise to Orace, who was standing on the steps. Without saying a word Lady Valerie followed him up the broad oak staircase.

Upstairs, at the end of one wing, there was a self-contained suite consisting of sitting room, bedroom and bathroom. Simon indicated it all with a generous gesture.

"You couldn't do better at the Carlton," he said. "The windows don't open and they're made of unbreakable glass, but it's all air-conditioned, so you'll be quite comfortable. And any time you get tired of the view, you've only got to tell me where that cloakroom ticket is and I'll take you straight back to London."

Orace put down the valise and went out again with his peculiar strutting limp.

Lady Valerie turned round in a quick circle and stood in front of the Saint. Her face was blazing.

"You," she said incoherently. "You…"

She took a swift step forward and struck at him with her open hand. His cheek stung with the slap. Instinctively he grasped her wrist and held it, but she struggled in his arms like a wildcat, wriggling and kicking at his shins.

"Oh!" she sobbed. "I–I hate you!"

"You break my heart," said the Saint. "I thought it was the dawn of love."

She took a lot of holding: her slim body was strongly built and her muscles were in excellent condition. In the struggle her hair had become disordered, and her breath came quickly between parted lips that were too close to his for serenity.

The Saint smiled and kissed her.

She stopped struggling. Her breasts were tight against him; her lips were moist and desirous under his. One of her arms slid behind his neck.

The kiss lasted for some time. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and moved her gently away.

"I'm sorry about that," he said. "I didn't really mean to force my vile attentions on you, but you asked for it."

"Did I?" she said.

She turned away from him towards a mirror and began to pat her hair into place.

"You are a cad, aren't you?" she said.

Her eyes, seen in the mirror, held the same baffling expression that had puzzled him in the car; but now there was mockery with it. Her lips were stirred by a little smile of almost devilish satisfaction. She had a pleased air of feeling that she had done something very clever.

"I think you're a dangerous woman," he said with profound conviction.

She yawned delicately and rubbed her eyes like a sleepy kitten.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "Anyway, I'm too tired to argue. But you'll have to go on being nice to me now, won't you? I mean, what would Patricia do if I told her?"

"She'd write your name on the wall," said the Saint, "where we keep all the others. We're making a mural of them."

"Would she? Well, don't forget that I know what you've done with Bravache and those other men. When they've been bumped off, or whatever you call it, I shan't want you to get hanged for it if I go on liking you."

The Saint was grinning as he went out and locked the door. It was the first piece of unalloyed fun that had enriched the day.

At 4 A.M. that morning a young policeman on his beat noticed a suspicious cluster of shapes in a doorway in Grosvenor Square. He flashed his light on them and saw that they were the bodies of three men, with adhesive tape over their mouths and their hands fastened somehow behind them, sprawled against the door in grotesque attitudes. They were stripped to the waist and horrid red stains were smeared across their torsos.

Blood!… The young policeman's heart skipped a beat. In a confused vision he saw himself gaining fame and promotion for unravelling a sensational murder mystery, becoming in rapid succession an inspector, a superintendent, and a chief commissioner.

He ran up the steps, and as he did so he became aware of a pungent odour that seemed oddly familiar. Then one of the bodies moved painfully and he saw that they were not dead. Their bulging eyes blinked at his light and strange nasal grunts came from them. And as he bent over them he discovered the reason for the red stains that had taken his breath away, and at the same time located the source of that hauntingly familiar perfume. It was paint. From brow to waist they were painted in zebra stripes of gaudy red and blue, with equal strips of their own white skins showing in between to complete the pattern. The decorative scheme had even been carried over the tops of their heads, which had been shaved for the purpose to the smoothness of billiard balls.

Hanging over them, on the door handle, was a card inscribed with hand-printed letters:

4

Simon Templar was having breakfast in Cornwall House when a call on the telephone from the watchful Sam Outrell at his post in the lobby heralded the arrival of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal a few seconds before the doorbell sounded under his pudgy finger.

Simon went to the door himself. The visitation was no surprise to him — as a matter of fact, he had been fatalistically expecting it for some hours. But he allowed his eyebrows to go up in genial surprise when the opening door revealed Teal's freshly laundered face like a harvest moon under a squarely planted bowler hat.

"Hail to thee, blithe spirit," he greeted the detective breezily. "I was wondering where you'd been hiding all these days. Come in and tell me all the news."

Teal came in like an advancing tank. There was an aura of portentous somnolence about him, as if he found the whole world so boring that it was hardly worth while to keep awake. Simon knew the signs like the geography of his own home. When Chief Inspector Teal looked as if he might easily fall asleep in a standing position at any moment it meant that he had something more than usually heavy weighing on his mind; and on this particular morning it was not insuperably difficult for the Saint to guess what that load was. But his manner was seraphically conscience free as he steered the detective into the living room.

"Have some breakfast," he suggested convivially.

"I had my breakfast at breakfast time," Teal said with dignity.

He stood rather stiffly and sluggishly, holding his sedate black derby over his navel.

Simon lifted his shoulders in regret.

"There are times when you have an almost suburban smugness," he said deploringly. "Never mind. You'll excuse me if I go on with mine, won't you? Sit down, Claud. Take off your boots and make yourself at home. Why should these little things come between us?"

Teal sank heavily into a chair.

"I suppose you were up late last night," he said ponderously. "Is that why you're having breakfast so late this morning?"

"I don't know." The Saint punctured his second egg. "That wouldn't be a bad excuse; but why should I make excuses?" The Saint waved his fork oratorically. "One of the many troubles of this cockeyed age is the glorification of false virtues. The bank clerk gets up early because he has to. And consequently dozens of fortunate people who don't need to get up early drag themselves out of bed at insanitary hours because it makes them feel as virtuous as a bank clerk. Instead of aspiring towards freedom and emancipation, we make a virtue of assuming unnecessary restrictions. A man spends his life working to the position where he doesn't have to get to the office at nine o'clock, and then he boasts that he still gets up at seven-thirty every morning. Well, then, what was he working for? Why didn't he save his energy and remain a clerk? You might build an indictment of all our accepted values on that. Poor men nibble a crust of bread because that's all they've got, and millionaires go on a diet of dry crusts and soda water—"

"What were you doing last night?" asked the detective implacably.

Simon looked shocked.

"Really, Claud! Have you no discretion? Or have you by any chance become a gossip writer?"

"I just want to know where you were last night," Teal said immovably. "I know you've got one of your usual alibis, but I'd like to hear it. And then perhaps you'll tell me why you did it."

"Did what?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"I wish I did. It sounds so intriguing."

"What were you doing last night?"

Simon buttered a slice of toast.

"So far as I recollect, I spent a classically blameless evening. An archbishop could have followed in my footsteps without getting a single speck of mud on his reverend gaiters. Preceded by massed choirs in white surplices, and marshalled by a fatigue party from the Salvation Army—"

"Let me tell you some of the things you did," Teal interrupted stolidly. "You dined at the Berkeley with Lady Valerie Woodchester. She left at about half-past ten, and you went to the Cafe Royal. You got back here towards twelve-fifteen, and at five minutes past one you went out again. Your friends Quentin and Uniatz were with you, and you were careful to see that you weren't followed. At twenty-five minutes past two Miss Holm left here in another of your cars, and she was also very careful to see that she wasn't followed. At four-thirty this morning you came in alone. I want to know what you were doing between one-five and four-thirty."

"What a man you are, Claud!" said the Saint with admiration. "Nothing is hidden from you. Your house must be full of little birds."

"It's my business to know what people like you are doing."

"You know," said the Saint in an injured tone, "I believe you must have been having me watched. I don't call that very friendly of you. Have you lost your old faith in me?"

"What were you doing between one-five and four-thirty this morning?" Teal repeated tigerishly.

The Saint stirred his coffee with an air of shy discomfort.

"I really didn't want you to know about that," he confessed. "You see, much as I love you, you're always the professional policeman, and you have to take such a morbidly legal view of things. The fact is, Peter and Hoppy and I decided that we didn't feel tired so we pushed off to a little club we wot of where they haven't any respect for the licensing laws, and we stayed there hardening our arteries and talking to loose women until nearly dawn."

"What's the name of this club?"

"That's just what I can't tell you, Claud. You see my point. If you knew where it was you'd feel you had to do something about closing it down, because any place in London where one might have a good time always has to be closed down. And that would be a pity, because it's quite a cheery little spot now, and these places always become so dismal when they get infested with disguised policemen snooping about for evidence and leaving the smell of Lifebuoy soap in their wake—"

"All right," Teal said with frightful restraint. "That's your story. And now suppose you tell me about those men you painted red, white and blue and left outside Luker's house."

The Saint put down his coffee cup. He wore the incredulous and appalled expression of a Presbyterian elder who has been accused of operating an illicit still.

"Painted?" he said hollowly.

"Yes."

"Red, white and blue?"

"Yes."

"Outside Luker's house?"

"Yes."

"Who were these men?"

"You know as well as I do. Their names are Bravache, Pietri and Dumaire."

The Saint shook his head with great concern.

"Somebody must have been pulling your leg, Claud," he said. "I simply can't imagine myself doing a thing like that, even after a night at the place where I was. Did anybody see me paint them and leave them outside Luker's house? Do they say I painted them?"

Mr Teal unwrapped a springboard of spearmint with wearily deliberate fingers, as if he were undressing himself for bed after a hard day. He had already spent a bad hour in dire anticipation of this interview and his forebodings had not been disappointed. But he had to go through with it. For an hour he had been preparing himself, wrestling with his soul, facing in prospect all the gibes and banter and infuriating mockery that he knew he would have to endure, drilling himself to the fulfilment of the vow that he would be calm, that he would be rocklike and masterful, that for this one lone historic occasion he would not let the Saint get under his skin and cut the suspenders of his self-control, as the Saint had done with fateful facility so often in the past; and the soul of Claud Eustace Teal had emerged tried and tempered from the annealing fires. Or nearly. He would triumph in the ordeal even though blood oozed from his pores.

"No," he said. "Nobody saw you do it. The men don't say it was you. They say they don't know who it was. But I know it was you!"

"Do you?" At that moment the Saint was as sleek as a seal. "What makes you think so?"

"I know it because Luker was one of the guests at that country-house fire that you were meddling in, where John Kennet was killed; and I should think of you in connection with anything that happened to Luker now. Besides that, two of these men are Frenchmen. When I saw you at that place where Ralph Windlay was murdered, you read me two cuttings from French newspapers and talked about something called the Sons of France. Red, white and blue are the French national colours. Painting those men like that and leaving them outside Luker's doorstep is just the sort of thing I'd expect of you. There's one connecting link all the way through, and you're it!"

Simon regarded him like a spot on the carpet.

"And that's your evidence, is it?"

Teal swallowed, but he nodded stubbornly.

"That's it."

"That's the collection of barefaced balderdash that's supposed to authorize you to take me into custody and lug me off to Vine Street. That's the immortal excretion of the best brains of Scotland Yard. Or have I misjudged you, Claud? Have you taken a pill and woken up to find you've got a genius for publicity? You'll certainly get a bale of it over this. Let's go on with it. What will the charge be? Wait a minute, I can see it all — 'That he did feloniously and with malice aforethought assault the complainants with an unlawful instrument, to wit, a paintbrush—' "

"Did I say that?" asked Mr Teal.

It was quite a moment for Mr Teal. For the first time that he could remember he stopped the Saint short.

The Saint looked at him in wary surmise. A hundred disjointed ideas rocketed through his head, but they all arrived by devious paths at the same mark. And that was something compared with which a seven-headed dragon pirouetting on its tail would have been a perfectly commonplace phenomenon.

"Do you mean," he said foggily, "that you didn't come here to arrest me?"

"You ought to know enough about the law to know that I can't do anything if these men won't make a complaint."

Simon felt a trifle lightheaded.

"You didn't come here to congratulate me by any chance?"

"No."

"And you didn't come here for breakfast."

"No."

"Well, what the devil did you come for?"

"I thought you might like to tell me something about it," Teal said woodenly. "What is all this about, and what has Luker got to do with it?"

The Saint reached for a cigarette.

"Quite apart from the fact that I don't see why I should be supposed to know, haven't you thought of asking him?"

"I have asked him. He said he'd never seen these men before; and they say they've never heard of him."

The Saint lighted his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs under the table.

"Then it certainly does look very mysterious," he said, but his blue eyes were quiet and searching.

Chief Inspector Teal turned his venerable bowler on his blue-serge knees. He had got his spearmint nicely into condition now — a plastic nugget, malleable and yet resistant, still flavorous, crisp without being crumbly, glutinous without adhesion, obedient to the capricious patterning of his mobile tongue working in conjunction with the clockwork reciprocation of his teeth, polymorphous, ductile. It was a great comfort to him. He would have been lost without it. What he had to do was not easy.

"I know," he said. "That's why I came to see you. I thought you might be able to give me a lead."

The Saint stared at him for several moments in a silence of gull-winged eyebrows and wide absorbent eyes, while that cataclysmic statement sank through the diverse layers of his comprehension.

"Well, I will be a cynocephalic mandrill scratching my blue bottom on the ramparts of Timbuctoo," he said finally. "Or am I one already? I thought I'd seen every kind and sample of human nerve in my time, but this is the last immortal syllable. You treat me as a suspicious character; you habitually accuse me of every crime that's committed in England that you're too thickheaded to solve; you threaten me three times a week with penal servitude and bodily violence; you persecute me at every conceivable opportunity; you disturb my slumbers and hound me at my own breakfast table; and then you have the unmitigated gall to sit there, with your great waistcoat full of stomach, and ask me to help you!"

It was a bitter draught for Mr Teal to get past his uvula, but he managed it, even though his gorge threatened to suffocate him. Perhaps it was one of the most prodigious victories of self-discipline that he had ever achieved in his life.

"That's what I want," he said, with a superhuman effort of carelessness that made him look as if he was about to lapse into an apoplectic coma. "Why should we go on fighting each other? We're both really out for the same thing, and this is a case where we could work together and you could save yourself getting into trouble as well. I'll be quite frank with you. I remembered everything you said at Windlay's place, and I made some inquiries on my own responsibility. I've seen a verbatim report of the Kennet inquest, and I've talked with one of the reporters who was there. I agree with you that it was conducted in a very unsatisfactory way. I put it to the chief commissioner that we ought to consider reopening the case. He agreed with me then, but yesterday evening he told me I'd better drop it. I'm pretty sure there's pressure being put on him to leave well alone — the kind of pressure he can't afford to ignore. But I don't like dropping cases. If there's anything fishy about this it ought to come out. Now, you said something to me about the Sons of France, didn't you?"

"I may have mentioned them," Simon admitted cautiously. "But—"

Chief Inspector Teal suddenly opened his baby-blue eyes and they were not bored or comatose or stupid, but unexpectedly clear and penetrating in the round placidity of his face.

"Well, that's why I came to see you. You may have something that puts the whole puzzle together. Bravache and Dumaire are Frenchmen." Mr Teal paused. He fashioned his gum once into the shape of a spindle, and then clamped his teeth destructively down on it. "And I happen to have found out that John Kennet was a member of the Sons of France," he said.