The cabin door crashed open. The spell splintered into shining shards. Holbrook-Faulks stood stony-faced against the door.
“Hello, Bill,” the girl said, her eyes still on the Saint. “I came, you see.”
Bill’s gaze was an unwavering lance, with the Saint pinioned on its blazing tip.
“Am I gonna have trouble with you too, Saint?”
The Saint opened his mouth to answer, and stiffened as another sound reached his ears. Jockey and weight lifter were returning.
“We’ll postpone any jousting over the fair lady for the moment,” Simon said. “We’re about to have more company.”
Holbrook stared wildly around.
“Come on, Dawn. Out the window. They’ll kill us.”
Many times before in his checkered career the Saint had had to make decisions in a fragment of time — when a gun was leveled and a finger whitening on the trigger, when a traffic accident roared toward consummation, when a ship was sinking, when a knife flashed through candlelight. His decision now was compounded of several factors, none of which was the desire for self-preservation. The Saint rarely gave thought room to self-preservation — never when there was something more important to preserve.
He did not want this creature of tattered loveliness, this epitome of what men live for, to get out of his sight. He must therefore keep her inside the cabin. And there was no place to hide...