"He was still only one of the rank and file — or maybe you might call him a sergeant. It was a bit of luck that we found him driving the first lorry we hijacked, with what I knew about his earlier career of crime;* and he had sense enough to see that it was safer for him to take his chance with us than have himself parked in a sack outside Scotland Yard; but I don't know that he could ever have got a line on the nobs… I made a date to meet him later tonight, by the way — when he rang me up about this lorryload he said he'd be driving down from town in the small hours and might have some more tips, so I thought we'd better get together."
*See The Misfortunes of Mr Teal.
"Tell him to give us a ring when we're going to be bumped off," said Peter. "I'd like to know about it, so I can pay my insurance premium."
The Saint looked at his watch.
"We've got an hour and a half to go before that," he said. "And we may get a squeal out of Hoppy's protege before then."
His earlier relaxation, in which he had been not so much recovering from a blow as waiting for the inspiration for a fresh attack, had vanished altogether. Peter Quentin could feel the atmosphere about him, more than through anything he said, in the gay surge of vitality that seemed to gather around him like an invisible aura, binding everyone within range in a spell of absurd magic which was beyond reason and was yet humanly impossible to resist; and once again Peter found himself surrendering blindly to that scapegrace wizardry.
"All right," he said ridiculously. "Let's squeeze the juice out of him and see what we get."
Near Stoney Cross they had swung off the main road into a narrow track that seemed to plunge into the cloistered depths of the New Forest as if it would drift away into the heart of an ancient and forgotten England where huntsmen in green jerkins might still leap up to draw their bows at a stag springing from covert; actually it was a meandering and unkempt road that wandered eventually into the busy highways that converged on Lyndhurst. Somewhere along this road Peter Quentin hauled the wheel round and sent them jolting along an even narrower and deeper-rutted track that looked like nothing but an enlarged footpath. They lurched round a couple of sharp turns, groaned up a forbidding incline and jarred to a sudden stop.
Peter switched out the lights, and the Saint put his feet down and stretched his cramped limbs.
"We all know about housemaid's knee," he remarked, "but did you ever hear about truckdriver's pelvis? That's what I've got. If I were a union man I should go on strike."