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.It isn't every day we ferry a cool million across London, and I don'tsee why the honour of being the pilot shouldn't be your share of the act.""Right-ho."The girl disappeared, and Simon opened another door.He watched the cases being stowed one by one in the back of the car, and theforefinger of his right hand curled tensely over the trigger of his gun.Hehad meant every word of his threat to the two men who were doing the job; andthey must have known it, for they carried out his orders with commendablealacrity.And yet Simon felt a faint electric tingle of uneasiness fan-ning up his backand into the roots of his hair like the march of a thousand ghostlyneedle-points.He could not have de-scribed it in any other way, and he was asmuch at a loss to account for it as if the simile had been the actual fact.Itwas sheer blind instinct, a seventh sense born of a hundred breath-lessadventures, that touched him with single thrill of insufficient warning andleft it at that.And for once in his life he ignored the danger-sign.He heardthe whine of the self-starter, followed by the low-pitched powerful pulsing ofthe eight cleanly balanced cylinders, and saw the door closed upon the last ofthe bags: and he turned smiling to the two bruisers.He pointed."If you keep straight on down that road," he said, "it ought to land yousomewhere near Birmingham if you travel far enough.You might make that yournext stop."One of the men took a pace towards him."You just listen a minute  ""To what?" asked the Saint politely."I'm telling yer  ""A bad habit," said the Saint disapprovingly."You must try and break yourselfPage 54ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlof that.And now I'm sorry, but I can't stop.I hope you'll wash the back ofyour neck, see that your socks are aired, say your prayers every night, andget your face lifted at the first opportunity.Now push your ears back,my cherubs, and let your feet chase each other."His right hand moved significantly in his pocket, and there was an instant'sperilous silence.And then the man who had spoken jerked his head at theother."Come on," he said.The two men turned and lurched slowly away, looking back over their shoulders.And the Saint put one foot on the running-board.And somewhere, far away, he heard the sound of his own head being hit.It wasas extraordinary an experience as any that had ever happened to him.Patriciawas looking ahead down the road, while her hand eased the gears quietly intomesh; and the Saint himself had not heard the slightest move-ment that mighthave put him on his guard.And the premoni-tory crawling of his nerves whichhe had felt a few seconds earlier had performed what it considered to be itsduty, and had subsided.He could have believed that the whole thing wasan incredibly vivid hallucination but for the sicken-ing sharp stab of suddenagony that plunged through his brain like a spurt of molten metal andparalysed every milligram of strength in his body.A great white light swelled up and exploded before his eyes; and after it camea wave of whirling blackness shot with rocketing flashes of dizzy, dazzlingcolour, and the blackness was filled with a thin high singing note thatdrilled into his eardrums.His knees seemed to melt away beneath him.And then, from somewhere above the vast dark gulf into which he was sinking,he heard Patricia's voice cry out."Simon!"The word seemed to spell itself into his dulled brain letter by letter, as ifhis mind read it off a slowly uncoiling scroll.But it touched a nerve centrethat roused him for one frac-tional instant of time to fight back titanicallyagainst the numbing oblivion that was swallowing him up.He knew that his eyes were open, but all he could see was one blurred segmentof her face, as he might have seen her picture in a badly-focused fade-outthat had gone askew.And to that isolated scrap of vision in the overwhelmingblackness he found the blessed strength to croak two words:"Drive on."And then a second surge of blackness welled up around him and blotted outevery sight and sound, and he fell away into the infinite black void.Chapter VII"So even your arrangements can break down, Templar when your accomplice failsyou," Kuzela remarked silkily [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]