He knew from all the pitiless years behind him how easily this could be an effective ambush. When he got out to move the smouldering log, it would be a simple job for a couple of hirelings of the ungodly to attack him. A certain Mr Matson, for instance, might have been capable of setting such a trap — if Mr Matson had known that Simon Templar was the Saint, and was on his way to interview Mr Matson in Galveston, and if Mr Matson had had the prophetic ability to foretell that Simon Templar was going to take this coastal road. But since Simon himself hadn't known it until about half an hour ago, it appeared that this hypothesis would have credited Mr Matson with a slightly fantastic grade of clairvoyance.
The Saint stared at the log with all these things in his mind; and while he was doing it he discovered for the first time in his life the real validity of a much handled popular phrase.
Because he sat there and literally felt his blood run cold.
Because the log moved.
Not in the way that any ordinary log would have moved, in a sort of solid rolling way. This log was flexible, and the branches stirred independently like limbs.
Simon Templar had an instant of incredulous horror and sheer disbelief. But even while he groped back into the past for any commonplace explanation of such a defection of his senses he knew that he was wasting his time. Because he had positively seen what he had seen, and that was the end of it.
Or the beginning.
Very quietly, when there was no reason to be quiet, he snapped open the door of the car and slid his seventy-four inches of whipcord muscle out on to the road. Four of his quick light strides took him to the side of the huge ember in the highway. And then he had no more doubt.
He said, involuntarily: "My God…"
For the ember was not a tree. It was human.