Teal's whistle, in the street below, shrieked again like a lost soul.

And Jill Trelawney laughed. Not hysterically, not even in bravado. She just laughed. Softly.

She turned back the coat of her plain tweed costume, and he saw a little holster on the broad belt she wore.

"But I've never overlooked it," she said—"not entirely."

Simon came round the table, and his fingers closed on her wrist in a circle of cool steel.

"Not that way," he said.

She met his eyes.

"It's the only way for me," she said. "I've never had a fancy for the Old Bailey — and the crowds — and the black cap. And the three weeks' waiting, in Holloway, with the chaplain coming in like a funeral every day. And the last breakfast — at such an unearthly hour of the morning!" The glimmer in her eyes was one of pure amusement. "No one could possibly make a good dying speech at 8 a.m.," she said.

"You're talking nonsense," said the Saint roughly.

"I'm not," she said. "And you know it. If the worst comes to the worst—"