The Saint felt nothing. He wondered, in a nightmarishly detached sort of way, whether he had actually been hit or not. But he was able to turn and align his sights without a quiver on their next target.
And that was when he really felt that something must have snapped in his brain. For Colonel Marteau was not even looking at him. He was standing stiffly upright, a strangely drawn and bloodless expression on his face, his right arm down at his side and the muzzle of his gun resting laxly on the table. And somewhere a little further off Bravache seemed to be sliding down the wall, like a lay figure whose knee joints have given way. And there was a blue-shirted figure squirming on the floor and making queer moaning noises. And another pair of blue-sleeved arms raised high in the air. And another door open, and grim-visaged armed men swarming in, men in plain clothes, men in the uniforms of gendarmes and agents de police and the black helmets of the Gardes Mobiles. And among them all two men who could only have been the ghosts of Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz, with automatics smoking in their hands. And another man, short and dapperly dressed, with a blue chin and curled moustaches and bright black eyes, who seemed to be armed only with a cigarette in an amber holder, who strode up between them and bowed to the Saint with old-fashioned elegance.
"Monsieur Templar," he said, "I only regret that your message reached me too late to save you this inconvenience."
The Saint had no idea what he was talking about; but he could never have allowed the prefect of police of Paris to outdo him in courtesy.
"My dear Monsieur Senappe," he said, "really, it's been no trouble at all."
Epilogue
"That's a nice bit of chinchilla," said the Saint.
"It is, isn't it," said Lady Valerie Woodchester, rubbing her cheek luxuriously on her shoulder.
They had met quite by chance in Piccadilly. Simon took her into the Berkeley and bought her a sherry.
"By the way," she said very casually, "I think I'm going to be married soon."