And he was putting it in his pocket when he heard a muffled cry come faintly down the branch on his right. The Saint broke into a run.
Stephen Weald, with his back to the door, and so intent upon the object of his madness that he could notice nothing else, did not hear the Saint's entrance; and, indeed, he knew nothing whatever of the Saint's arrival until two steely hands took him by the scruff of the neck and literally bounced him off his feet.
Then he turned and saw the Saint, and his right hand dived for his pocket. But Simon was much too quick. His fist crashed up under Weald's jaw and dropped him in his tracks.
He turned to find the girl beside him. "Did you hear what he said — that he was Waldstein?" The Saint nodded.
"I did," he said, and bent and seized Weald by the collar and jerked him half upright. Then he got his arms under the man's limp body and hoisted him up in a lump, as he might have picked up a child. "Where are you going?"
The girl's voice checked him on his way to the door, and Simon glanced back over his shoulder.
"I'm going to collect Donnell and fill the party," he said. "We policemen have our jobs to hold down. D'you mind?"
Then he went on his way. He seemed totally unconscious of having performed any personal service for the girl, and he utterly ignored the sequel to the situation into which a hackneyed convention might pardonably have lured any other man. That sublimely bland indifference would have been as good as a blow between the eyes to anyone but Jill Trelawney. He went on up the stairs carrying Weald. He heard the girl following behind him; but she did not speak, and Simon appeared to take no notice of her presence.
And thus he stepped through the open cupboard, and found Harry Donnell waiting for him on the other side of a Colt.
Simon stood quite still.