Perez's flat eyes hid a gleam of approval. He got up and slouched through the door as other footsteps approached along the passage.
Quintana looked at the Saint.
"A formality," he said, "but we must be careful. There are only three of us."
There were only two of them now, to be exact; and Quintana was still balanced with his fingers against the edge of the desk, in a position where it would take him a fraction of a second longer to recover himself than if he had been sitting up. The last vital difference in the odds had been adjusted when Perez left the room…
The Saint seemed to lounge even more lazily, while his left hand took a firmer grip of the arm of his chair. He waved his cigarette case back aimlessly, so that it was near his ear.
"Of course," he said very clearly, "I'm not worried about that. The only thing I'm bothered about is this bloke Graham. You know, the police might think he murdered Ingleston. We know that Perez did it—"
"I should hardly call it murder," answered Quintana, and although he was taking no pains to clarify his voice, it must have been lucidly audible through the open door. "Ingleston was a traitor, and traitors are executed. Perez was simply carrying out the sentence of the Fascist government as I interpreted it."
"That's all I wanted to know," said the Saint; and with a crisp jerk of his wrist he sent his cigarette case spinning diagonally upwards like a whirling shaft of silver, straight at the single light over the desk.
The plop of the exploding bulb thudded like a gunshot into the silence, and after it there was a flash of darkness, complete and blinding, before the dim quantity of light filtering through from the corridor outside could take effect on unadjusted eyes. And in that interval of darkness the Saint hurled himself out of his chair like a living thunderbolt.
He reached the bundle of bank notes on the desk as his cigarette case went on to crash against the far wall, and they were in his pocket before it clattered to the floor. Quintana went first for his gun, but he was off balance, he had to take weight off his hands before they could grab, and that lost him a fraction of a second in which everything was lost. As Quintana raised the automatic Simon went on with the same continuous hurtling movement that had swept the sheaf of money into his pocket, but at this stage all the power and impetus of the movement was gathered to a focal point in his left fist. The fist took Quintana squarely and centrally on the end of his nose, with every ounce of the Saint's flying bone and muscle behind it; something seemed to crumple like an eggshell, and Simon felt his knuckles sog into warm sticky pulp.