Bravache was there also. He emphasized his own importance by stopping to very deliberately draw off his gloves before he strolled across to one of the doors that opened off the room where they were. He knocked, turned the handle, and clicked his heels in the doorway as he raised his arm in salute.
"Les prisonniers, mon commandant."
"Trиs bien," answered a voice from the room beyond; and even in those two words the Saint recognized the harsh strident tones that he had heard on the radio in his car — at least a hundred and fifty years ago.
Bravache turned away from the door and clicked his heels again.
"Garde а vous!" he barked.
The escort sprang to attention, but without taking their hands from the butts of their revolvers.
Out of the room, striding past the stiffly drawn up figure of Bravache, came a tall gray-haired man of about fifty-five. He wore the same uniform as the escort, except that there was a double row of coloured ribbons on his breast and his blue shirt had six gold bars on each shoulder. No Frenchman would have needed any introduction to him. That long narrow face with the low forehead and the black piercing eyes and the chin that stuck out like the toe of a boot had been caricatured by a score of artists who tomorrow might be wishing that their talents had been otherwise employed. It was Colonel Raoul Marteau, prospective dictator of France.
And after him came Kane Luker.
Luker glanced at the prisoners without expression, as if he had never seen them before, while Marteau ceremoniously returned the escort's salute. He followed the commandant as he went on to take one of- the chairs behind the long table; and the Saint's old dauntlessly irreverent smile touched his bruised lips.
"You know," he remarked to Valerie, "if Luker only had a barrel organ he'd still be a bloated capitalist. An ordinary organ-grinder thinks himself lucky if he's just got one monkey."