Simon went towards it more slowly and cautiously. He stepped on to the verandah, and found a door near the window. Light came from under it. There was no sound at all, inside or outside.
The Saint kicked the door inwards and took two steps into the room. Across from him, unbound but unarmed, Jean Morland stared at him with wide-eyed horror and contempt. Between them, on the floor, Max Valmon and the man called Nails lay in the grotesque attitudes of sudden death.
He heard a single footfall behind him, and a gun jarred into his back. A voice that was somehow familiar, and yet distorted so that he didn’t recognise it at once, said, “Drop the gun.”
Simon stood still and dropped it.
The voice said, “Go on in.”
Simon obeyed. It seemed as if a time machine had been turned back and he was repeating a scene that had already been played once that night.
“Now turn round.”
The Saint turned, and saw Hank Reefe standing square in the doorway, frosty-eyed and expressionlessly leather-faced, with his old-fashioned Colt held level at his hip.
“I want you to see it coming, you rat,” said that only half familiar voice.
The Saint looked at him steadily.