"We shan't have to go that far. Look at it on the balance of probabilities. If she stays in this game and we stay in it, it's ten to one that our trails '11 cross again."
Peter thought for a moment.
"Now you come to mention it," he said, "the odds are bigger than that. If she's got any sense she'll find out who you are from the insurance certificate in the car. And then she'll be calling on you with a team of gunmen to ask for her lorry back."
"I had thought of that," said the Saint soberly. "And maybe that's the biggest advantage of all."
"It would save us the trouble of having to find someone to give it to," Peter agreed sympathetically.
But the Saint blew a cloud of smoke at the low roof of the tiny compartment and said dreamily: "Just look at it strategically, old lad. All the time we've known that there was some big nob or bunch of nobs organizing this racket — some guy or guys who keep themselves so exclusive that not even their own mob knows who's at the top. They're the boys we're after, for the simple reason that because they've got the brains to run the show in a way that the saps who do the dirty work, like our pal in the back here, haven't got the intelligence to run it, they've also got the brains to see that they get the fattest dividend. We've been messing about for some time, annoying them in small ways like this and trying to get a lead, and all the time we've been trying to keep ourselves under cover. Now I'm just beginning to wonder if that was the smartest game we could have played. In any case the game's been changed now whether we like it or not; and I don't know that I'm brokenhearted. Now we're on the range to be shot at, and while that's going on we may get a look at the shooters."
"Who'll still be just the saps who do the dirty work."
"I'm not so sure."
For once Peter restrained the flippant retort which came automatically to his mind. He knew as well as any man that the Saint had been proved big enough game to bring the shyest and most cautious hunters out of hiding. There was something about the almost fabulous stories which had been built up around the character of the Saint that tended to make otherwise careful leaders feel that he was a problem of which the solution could not be safely deputed to less talented underlings.
"All the same," he said, "we were getting along pretty well with Pargo."