Simon said, “An underground chamber and all the props of violent melodrama. This calls for a last-minute rescue by the Marines, Mrs Wingate.”
The woman flickered her icy glance at him. “Put your arm out, Mr Templar.”
Simon sighed, and offered his brown left forearm to Big Hazel. She dabbed the cotton on it, and grasped his wrist with a wrestler’s hand.
One quick glance assured him that Frankie’s tommy gun was almost obstructed by Big Hazel’s huge frame, after that he didn’t look at it. He watched the approach of the syringe, that was all but engulfed in her giant paw, and all his whipcord muscles were relaxed and waiting.
“Now, Hoppy,” he said coolly.
There came a sound he recognised — the indescribable noise, akin to pthoo! that marked the expulsion of a BB shot from between Hoppy Uniatz’s teeth...
For weeks Hoppy had been improving in accuracy, force, and the principles of oral ballistics. Had the interior of his mouth been rifled like a gun-barrel, his aim might have been bettered, but at this close range there was no chance of a miss. The BB, impelled with velocity and violence, completed the last touch of outrageous grotesquerie by hitting Big Hazel Green in the left eye.
“Next to a custard pie,” the Saint reflected, with some irrepressibly cynical part of his mind that sat in judgement with an eyebrow raised, “I couldn’t think of an improvement. Now—”
The balance of the situation tipped with dazzling suddenness. Big Hazel’s instant reaction to the introduction of a foreign particle into her optic apparatus was to bellow like a wounded bull, let go the Saint’s wrist, and clap her free hand to the injured organ. But simultaneously, without even waiting for that release, the Saint’s free right hand was moving.
If he had merely tried to seize Big Hazel, or to hit her on the jaw, the woman would probably have got away. But Simon Templar’s arm flashed down with a speed that almost blurred the vision, and his hand closed with murderous suddenness over hers. And the hand it closed on was holding a hypodermic syringe of brittle glass.