The barrel of the syringe became instantly a non-cohesive assortment of razor-sharp fragments, slicing agonisingly deeper into Big Hazel’s flesh as the Saint’s merciless grip ground tighter. All of her faculties were concentrated, to the exclusion of every other thought, on the immediate, vital, and hysterical necessity of opening her hand before the fingers began falling off. And being thus occupied, she was in no condition to realise that the Saint’s hand had also swung her around until she completely blocked Frankie’s line of fire.
At the same moment, Mr Uniatz moved with an agility that threw a surprising sidelight on his nickname. He dived for the nearest gun on the floor, and fired almost as his paw closed on it. The only sound Frankie Weiss made was a queer sort of choking cough as he went down, and the tommy gun never spoke at all...
“All right,” Kearney’s voice said from the top of the stairs. “Break it up, or I’ll let all of you have it.”
Simon pushed Big Hazel away and smiled up at him... “Good old Alvin,” he said. “Never too late to take a bow.”
Chapter sixteen
Monica Varing turned her head upon the pillow, and her hair moved with it in a shining skein on the bare satin of her shoulder. The robe she wore swooped downward from there in a “V” so deep that Simon Templar, leaning on the high footboard of her hospital bed, was aware of not wholly inexplicable vertigo whenever his eyes wandered that way.
He sighed ostentatiously.
Monica smiled. Her voice was warm temptation.
“Is anything wrong? I thought all your problems were wound up nicely.”
“They are — nearly all.” He grinned rather wryly. “Kearney got a promotion, Elliott cleared his good name, Laura Wingate—” The blue darkened. “Laura Wingate held out a lot longer than I expected, but she’s finally made a confession. Even Fingers Schultz.” The grin came back. “It seems that a gunsel named Fingers Schultz was picked up in the street last night with tyre-marks all over him, apparently the victim of a hit-run driver, but I haven’t asked Sammy the Leg what his car looks like.”