It made the Saint feel strangely naked and ineffectual as he moved towards it, with the whirling but no longer dizzy hollowness left in his head by the drug, and the unaccustomed formality of his muscular co-ordinations, and the cold knowledge that he had nothing to fight with but his own uncertain strength and uprooted wits. But Patrick Hogan — or whatever his real name was — had exposed himself in just as lonely a way for the job that he had to do; and his gun couldn't have helped him much, or the sounds below would have been different. And other men on more obvious battlefronts had done what they could with what they had, because wars didn't wait.
He didn't feel particularly glorious or heroic about it: it was much more a coldly predestined task that had to be finished. It didn't seem to spread any emotion on the fact that it could easily and probably be his own finish too. It was just an automatic and irresistible mechanism of placing one foot in front of another on a necessary path from which there was no turning back, although the mind could sit away and watch its own housing walking voluntarily toward oblivion.
And this was it, and he was it, for one trivial tremendous moment, himself, personally — the corny outlaw who redeemed himself in the last reel.
It was quite funny, and a lot of fun, in the way he was thinking.
He was moving like a cat, his ears travelling far ahead of his feet, and a new sound began to intrude upon them. A sound of voices. One voice detached itself from the two that were in converse, and a bell rang inside the Saint's head with brazen clangor.
It was the voice that had called Dr. Zellermann on the night the Saint had broken into the office.
And it was the voice of Ferdinand Pairfield.
Lightly and quickly, Simon pulled Avalon toward the closed door through which seeped the words of Dr. Zellermann and the fair Ferdinand.
"I won't do it," Ferdinand said. "That is your job, and you must complete it. You really must, Ernst."
The Saint was shocked. This voice wasn't fluttery, seeming always ready to trail off into a graceful gesture. This voice was venomous, reminding one of a beautiful little coral snake, looking like a pretty bracelet, coiled to strike and inject the poison that is more deadly, drop by drop, than that of the King Cobra, Here was no witless fag with a penchant for Crème Violette; here was a creature who could command in terms of death.