"Out, buddy."
Behind the Saint, Joe's gun added its subtle pressure to the command.
Simon pulled himself up slowly. Now that the climax of the ride was reached, he had ceased speculating upon the reactions of a doomed man. Every cell in his keen brain, every nerve and fibre of his body, was dynamically alive and watchful. His mind had never worked more clearly and smoothly, his body had never been keyed to a more perfect pitch of physical fitness, than they were at that moment in the deepening shadow of death. It was impossible to think that in a few brief moments, with one inconceivably numbing, crashing shock, that vibrant, pulsing life could be stilled, the brilliant mind dulled for ever, the play and delight of sensual experience and the sweet awareness of life swallowed up in a black nothingness from which there was no return.
He stepped down gradually to the running board. A yard from him, Maxie's automatic was levelled steadily at his chest; behind him, Joe's gun pushed no less steadily into his back. The wild thought crossed his mind that he might launch himself onto Maxie from the running board in a desperate smothering leap, trusting to the surprise to bowl him over before he could shoot, and to the beneficent darkness to take care of the rest. But in the next instant he knew that there was no hope there. In spite of his outward stolidity, Maxie was watching him like a cat; and he had measured his distance perfectly. To have jumped then would have been to jump squarely into a bullet, and Joe would probably have got him from behind at the same time.
With a face of iron the Saint lowered himself to the ground and straightened up, but his eyes met Maxie's calmly enough.
"Is this as far as we go?" he inquired.
"You said it," Maxie assented curtly.
Behind him, Simon could hear the crunch of Joe's brogans on the soil as the other gunman followed him out, and the brusque click of the door closing again. The weight of the gun muzzle touched his back again. He was gripped between two potential fires as securely as if he had been held in a pair of tangible forceps; and for the second time that icy qualm of doubt squirmed clammily in the pit of his stomach. In every movement that was made there was a practised confidence, an unblinking vigilance, such as he had never encountered before. No other two men he had ever met could have held him in the car so long, talking to him and lighting his cigarettes, without giving him a moment's chance to take them off their guard. No other two men that he could think of could have manoeuvred him in and out of it without offering at least one even toss-up on a break for freedom. He had always known, at the back of his mind, that one day he must meet his match— that sometime, somewhere, the luck which had followed him so faithfully throughout his career must turn against him, as it does in the life of every gambler and adventurer who refuses to acknowledge any limits. But he had not thought that it would happen there—just as no man ever believes that he will die tomorrow, although he knows that there must come a tomorrow when he will die. ... A thin shadow of the old Saintly smile touched his lips and did not reach his eyes.
"I hope you're going to do this with all the regular formalities," he said gently. "You know, I've often wondered just how the thing was done. I'd be awfully disappointed if you didn't bump me off in the most approved style."
At the back of him, Joe choked on an oath; but Maxie was unimpressed.
"Sure," he agreed affably. "We'll give you a show. But there ain't much to it. Just in the line of business, see?"
"I see," said the Saint quietly.
The complete unconcern, the blandly brutal callousness of Maxie's reply, seemed to have frozen something deep in his heart. He had faced death before—death that flamed out at him in violent, seething hate, death that dispassionately proposed his annihilation as a matter of cold expedience. He had dealt out death himself, in various ways. But never had he known a man to attempt to snuff out another's Life so casually, with such an indescribable absence of all personal feeling, as this ruthless killer who was preparing to send a bullet through his vitals—"just in the line of business. . . ."
The Saint had had his own rules of the game; but at that moment they were forgotten. If he ever broke loose from the trap in which he was held, if Destiny offered him that one lone ghost of a break to get away and join in the game again, for the rest of that adventure he would play it as his opponents played it—giving no quarter. He would be the same as they were—utterly without mercy or compunction. He would have only one remedy for all mistakes—the same as theirs.
In the dim light his eyes had lost all expression. Their gaze was narrowed down to a mere frosty gleam of jagged ice.
"Over by that tree," directed Maxie conversationally. "That's the best spot."
His phrasing of the words held a sinister implication that many other spots in that locality had been tried, and that his choice was based on the findings of long experience; but the suggestion was absolutely unconscious. He seemed even more indifferent than if he had been posing the Saint for a photograph.
Simon looked at him for a moment and then turned away. There was nothing else he could do. Sometimes he had wondered why even on the way to certain death a man should still submit to the dictation of a gun; now, with a terrible clarity of reason, he knew the answer. Until death had actually struck him, until the ultimate unanswerable instant of annihilation, he would cling to the hope that some miracle must bring reprieve; obedient to some illogical blind instinct of self-preservation, he would do nothing to precipitate the end.
Under the turning muzzle of Maxie's gun, the Saint took up his position against the trunk of a towering elm and turned round again. Joe nodded approvingly and at a sign from Maxie stepped closer to prepare the victim for execution according to the gangland code.
Methodically he unbuttoned the Saint's coat and opened it; then began a similar task upon his shirt.
"Some guys started wearin' bullet-proof vests," Maxie explained cheerfully.
Simon's nerves were tensed to the last unbearable ounce; his body was rigid like a steel bar. Now there was only Maxie covering him: Joe was fully taken up with his gruesome ritual, and the voiceless driver had raised the hood of the car and was seemingly engrossed in some minor ailment that he had detected in its mechanism. If he was to have a chance at all, it could only be now.
He moved slightly, as if to help Joe with his unbuttoning. Then, with a lightning movement, his left hand shot up. Lean fingers closed on Joe's left wrist as he fumbled with the Saint's shirt, and a sudden whipping contraction of steel sinews jerked the man aside, throwing him off balance and turning him half round on the leverage of his extended arm. The gun in his right hand was flung out of aim: Simon heard the crack of the explosion and saw the vicious splash of flame from the barrel, but the shot went off at right angles to the line it should have taken.
Simon's fist snapped over and thudded into the back of the gunman's neck, accurately at the base of his skull, smacking into the hard flesh and bone in a savage punch that must have almost jarred the bones loose from their sockets. The man grunted stupidly and lurched forward; but the Saint's left arm lashed round his upper body and held him up as a human shield, while his right hand grabbed at the man's gun wrist and held it to prevent Joe twisting it up behind his back and firing at point-blank range. He had had no time to wonder what Maxie might be doing during that flurry of hectic action; when the Saint had last observed him he had been three yards away and a trifle to his left; but the first jerk which had hurled Joe across the line of fire had made that position useless. Simon looked for him over Joe's shoulder and did not see him. He hauled his living shield round in a frantic spin; and then he heard the deafening peal of an automatic exploding somewhere close behind him on his right, and something hit him in the right side of his back below the shoulder with terrific force.