He was edging back the window curtains when the door began to open.
He had no fear for the man who was opening it, for there were so few flies on Orace that even a short-sighted man would have had no excuse for mistaking him for a Chilean mule. Neither had he any fear of the agile gunman who was upsetting his evening. Either the car was an ordinary car, in which case the gunman was winged if Simon Templar had ever learnt anything about the art of shooting up automobiles; or the car was an extraordinary car, lined throughout with half-inch nickel steel, in which case the gunman was probably not winged. And, either way, if it came to a fight.
"Joke!" murmured the Saint, and lowered his head again quickly.
Ordinary guns he was prepared for, and ready to take on any time. Not that he particularly fancied himself with guns, but he reckoned he could just about pull his weight in most kinds of rough stuff. But there was another kind of gun before tackling which Simon Templar always paused to take a deep breath and recite rapidly the verse from the hymn which contains a line about shelters from the stormy blast; and it was undoubtedly a specimen of that kind of gun which was spluttering a horizontal hailstorm of lead sufficiently close to his direction to be appreciably unpleasant.
Taking the breath, and postponing the recitation to a later date, Simon put up his head again; and as he did so the fire ceased, and the car picked up speed with a rush and swooped into the emptiness of Berkeley Square.
The Saint, standing at the corner of the mews and trying to draw a bead on one of the departing tires as the car turned into Mount Street, was briskly arrested.
"Don't be a bigger fool than you can help," he snarled; and the constable, recognizing him, released him with a stammered apology.
"It was a car, sir—"
"You amaze me," said the Saint, in awe. "I thought it was a team of racing camels. Get the number down in your book."
The policeman obeyed; and Simon, with a shrug,turned and shouldered his way back to the house through the nucleus of a gaping crowd.