split in the window and
the scar in the plaster was enough to show that the shot
had come in at a wide angle. The Saint sighed again. Perhaps his estimate of
himself had been wrong, It seemed that there
was something else which annoyed him
even more than to be interrupted after business hours—and that was to be
taken for a fool.
He glanced round the room and selected a
battered pickelhaube— relic of a grimmer warfare than that. Then he switched off the light. Returning to the window,
he knelt down so, that he was below
the level of the sill, and raised the
lower sash. On one side of this opening he dis played the pickelhaube, looped over the back of a chair which he
edged into position with his foot, and awaited developments with a
kindly interest.
The mews was deserted, and
there were no pedestrians visible at the entrance in Berkeley Square at that
moment, but he could pick out the shadowy bulk of a big saloon car parked in the cul-de-sac of the mews itself, and
the second shot from it impinged accurately upon the pickel haube with a noise like that of a dull gong.
Neither of the shots from
outside had been accom panied by a report, but
Simon Templar, since acquiring the right to be as noisy
as he pleased, had ceased to be of such a retiring
disposition. He emptied his automatic without stealth, and crammed in a fresh
magazine as he raced down the stairs.
His servant met him in the
hall.
“Count ten, and then
open the front door—but lie flat on the ground when you do it!” snapped the
Saint, and vanished into the sitting room
without explaining how this feat of
contortion was to be performed.
He was edging back the
window curtains when the door began to open.
He had no fear for the man
who was opening it, for there were so few flies
on Orace that even a short-sighted man would have had
no excuse for mistaking him for a Chilean mule. Neither had he any fear of
the agile gun man who was upsetting his
evening. Either the car was an
ordinary car, in which case the gunman was winged if Simon Templar had ever learnt anything about the
art of shooting up automobiles; or
the car was an extraordinary car, lined throughout with half-inch nickel
steel, in which case the gunman was probably not winged. And, either way, if it came to a fight …
“Joke!” murmured
the Saint, and lowered his head again quickly.
Ordinary guns he was
prepared for, and ready to take on any time. Not that he
particularly fancied himself with guns, but he reckoned he could just about
pull his weight in most kinds of rough
stuff. But there was another kind of
gun before tackling which Simon Templar al ways paused to take a deep breath and recite rapidly the verse from the
hymn which contains a line about shelters from the stormy blast; and it was undoubtedly a specimen of that kind of gun which was spluttering a
horizontal hailstorm of lead
sufficiently close to his direction to be appreciably unpleasant.
Taking the breath, and
postponing the recitation to a later date, Simon put up
his head again; and as he did so the fire ceased, and the car picked up speed
with a rush and swooped into the emptiness
of Berkeley Square.
The Saint, standing at the
corner of the mews and trying to draw a bead on one of the departing
tires as the car turned into Mount Street, was briskly arrested.
“Don’t be a bigger
fool than you can help,” he snarled; and the constable,
recognizing him, released him with a stammered
apology.
“It was a car, sir—— ”
“You amaze me,”
said the Saint, in awe. “I thought it
was a team of racing camels. Get the number down in your
book.”
The policeman obeyed; and
Simon, with a shrug,t urned and shouldered his way back to the house
through the nucleus of a gaping crowd.
He found Orace dabbing an
ear with a stained hand kerchief.
“Hurt?”
“Nossir—just a
splinter er wood. They were firin’ low.”
“It’s more painful
through the stomach,” said the Saint enigmatically,
and went on
Massimo Carlotto, Anthony Shugaar