“But he’ll kill us!” Holbrook began to babble. “It’s awful, the things he’ll do. You don’t know him, Saint. You can’t imagine, you couldn’t—”
“I can imagine anything,” said the Saint coldly. “I’ve been doing that for some time, and I’m tired of it. Now I’d prefer to know.”
He crossed the room as the footsteps outside turned into knuckles at the door.
“Welcome to our study club,” the Saint said.
Trailer Mac and Jimmy preceded an enormous hulk through the door and, when they saw Holbrook and Dawn, charged like lions leaping on paralyzed gazelles.
The Saint moved in a lightning blur. Two sharp cracks of fist on flesh piled Mac in one corner, Jimmy in another. They lay still.
A buttery chuckle caused the Saint to turn. He was looking into a small circular hole. A.38, he computed. He raised his eyes to twins of the barrel, but these were eyes. They lay deep in flesh that swelled in yellowish-brown rolls, flowing fatly downward to describe one of the fattest men the Saint had ever seen. They could only have belonged to a man called Selden Appopoulis.
“Mr Sydney Greenstreet, I presume?” Simon drawled.
The buttery chuckle set a sea of flesh ebbing and flowing.
“A quick action, sir, and an efficient direction of action. I compliment you, and am saddened that you must die.”