He said through his clenched teeth and rigid lips: "Never mind. We haven't got much longer. When they fetch us out again, I'm going to try to break loose. You give way to all your impulses — scream your head off, and fight as hard as you can to break away. Anything to keep their attention occupied. Leave the rest to me. I expect all we'll get will be two bellyfulls of bullets, but I may be able, to kill Luker and Marteau first."
She was quite still for a moment, and then she said in a strange strained voice: "Okay. I'll do everything I can."
He laid his face against hers as she leaned towards him, and went on sawing his wrists against the wall in a grim fury of torment. He spoke only once more.
"I'm sorry about this, Valerie," he said. "We might have had such a lot of fun."
Five minutes was no time at all. It seemed to be only a few moments before the big iron key rattled in the lock and the door opened again.
Bravache bowed in the doorway, his teeth shining in the set sneering grin that sat so naturally on his cold haughty face.
"You are ready?" he inquired.
It was a second or two before Lady Valerie got up.
The Saint rose to his feet after her. For all that he had suffered, the cords still held his wrists. But he had his strength, saved and stored up through all the hours when it had been useless to struggle: he had always had the strength of two or three ordinary men, and at this time when he had need of it all for one supreme effort his own will might make it greater. If only that was enough… Now that the last sands were trickling away he was conscious of a curious inward peace, a great stillness, an utter carelessness in which his nerves were like threads of ice.
He let the girl go first, and followed her back into the big barren room from which they had been taken.
Luker and Marteau still sat at the long table under the flag. Marteau was drawing nervous figures on the bare wood with a stub of pencil, but Luker was outwardly untouched by anxiety. Simon and Valerie were marched up in front of the table, and the escort of Sons of France re-formed around them; and Luker looked up at them with nothing but confidence on his square stony features.
"Have you made up your minds?"
"Yes," answered the Saint.
"Well?"
"We made up our minds," said the Saint unhurriedly,"that besides the barrel organ you might do well with ice cream as a side line."
Luker's expression did not change. It only became glassy and lifeless, as if it had been frozen into place.
He moved one of his hands less than two inches.
"Tie up the girl," he ordered in French; and the two nearest Sons of France grabbed Valerie by the arms.
Perhaps she was only acting. Or perhaps her nerve really broke then; perhaps her brain in the stupidity of terror had never quite grasped what the Saint had said while they were alone. But she fought wildly, crazily, even with her hands tied behind her back, bucking and staggering against them as they tried to drag her over to the iron rings in the wall, kicking out madly so that they cursed her until the third Son of France had to go over and help them. And that left only one on guard beside the Saint — the one who had slammed his fist into Simon's face only a little while before.
"You can't do this to me!" she was shrieking deliriously. "You can't… you filthy brutes… you can't…!"
Perhaps she was only acting. But the shrill shaky intensity of her voice stabbed through the Saint's brain with a rending reminder of how real it might have been.
He had half turned to watch her; and as he stood still no one was paying much attention to him. But in that volcanic immobility his arms hardened like iron columns, strained across the fulcrum of his back like twisted bars of tempered steel. The muscles writhed and swelled over his back and shoulders, leapt up in knotted strands like leathery hawsers from his shoulders down to his raw and bleeding wrists; a convulsion of superhuman power swept over his torso like the shock of an earthquake. And the ropes that held his hands together, weakened by the loss of the strands that he had been able to rub away in the few minutes that had been given him, were not strong enough to stand against it. There was a faint snap as the fibres parted; and his arms sprang apart with the jerk of unleashed tension. He was free.
Free but unarmed — for the few instants in which an unarmed man might move.
The guard beside him must have sensed the eruption that had taken place at his elbow; or perhaps his ears caught the thin crack of separating cords — too late. He began to turn; and that was his last conscious movement, the last flash of awareness in his little world.
He started to reach for the revolver in its holster on his hip. But another hand was there before his, a hand of lean sinewy fingers that whipped the weapon away from under his belated groping. An ear-splitting detonation crashed out between the cellar walls, and a shattering blow tore through his chest and gave him only one instant's anguish…
Simon Templar turned square to the room as the man folded down to his feet with an odd slowness. The barrel of his revolver swerved over the others in a measured quadrant.
"Any of you can have what your friend got," he said generously. "You've only got to ask."
None of them asked. For that brief precarious spell they were incapable of any movement. But he knew that every passing second was against him. He spoke to the girl, his voice razor edged and brittle.
"Valerie, come over here — behind me. And keep well out of the line of fire."
She started towards him, staying close against the walls. He didn't watch her. His eyes were darting like wasps over the six men that he had to deal with, probing with nerve-racked alertness for the point where the fight would start. The three remaining members of the escort grouped fairly close together where they had been struggling with the girl. Bravache, further away, with a skeletal grin pinned and forgotten on his face. Colonel Marteau, white lipped and rigid. Luker, heavy and petrified, but with his brain still working behind unblinking eyes.
And in his mind the Saint did ruthless arithmetic. Six men. And unless he was holding a five-chambered gun he should have five shots left. Even if he could drop one man stone cold with every single shot, that would still leave one armed man against him at the end. Even if no other Son of France elsewhere in the building had heard his first shot and would be coming in at any moment to investigate… It couldn't be much longer now before other heads made the same calculation. Whatever happened, if they called for a showdown, he couldn't win. The only choice he had left was where he should place his shots — while he had time to choose.
And yet he didn't want to take that suicidal vengeance while there was still even a spider thread of hope.
He said to the room at large: "Which is the way out of here?"
Nobody had time to answer, even if anyone had decided to.
Colonel Marteau stood up.
"Anyone who tells him," he stated harshly, "is a coward and a traitor."
"Will you set the example?" asked the Saint silkily. "Or would you rather be a dead hero?"
"I shall not tell you."
Simon knew that he had lost an infinitesimal point, but his face gave it no acknowledgment. The steel hardened in his eyes.
"Maybe we can change your mind for you," he said, without a flicker of apprehension in his voice. "Valerie, slip round behind these guys and bring me their guns."
He did not hear any movement.
"Go on," he rapped.
"But how can I?"
"If you try it, I think you'll be able to twist your hands round enough."
But he had lost another point. Those few words between them must only make plainer the ultimate hopelessness of his position. And with every point lost the score was creeping up against him with frightful speed. He would fight every inch of the way with the stubbornness of despair, but he knew in his heart that the battle could only end one way. If he could have made one of the men tell him the way out at once, they might have made a dash for it with a faint sporting chance of shooting their way through; but that had always been a far-fetched hope. They would never be made to talk so easily. And every delay was on their side. Sooner or later their confidence would return. It could only be a matter of seconds now. It was already returning. Sooner or later, with the eyes of his commandant upon him and his brain swimming with dreams of glory, one Son of France would screw up his nerve to the crucial fatal heroism that would point the way to a swift inevitable ending…