The Saint let his gaze travel round the saloon.
“Quite comfortable,” he admitted, “but I really thought Heaven would be a bit more luxurious. Besides”—he surveyed the six tough customers who had ranged themselves round him in a semi-circle that fairly bristled with knives and revolvers—“These don’t look like angels; and you don’t, either, my pet, if it comes to that. Do you think I could have missed the bus and arrived in Hell by mistake?”
His sodden trousers were shapeless, and the white of his torn shirt was marked with grease, but still, by the exercise of his inimitable gift, he was able to look debonair and immaculate. And, for all the apparently overwhelming odds against him, he retained his air of unshakable confidence. But this time Bittle could see no loophole in the trap in which he had the Saint, and he refused to be awed by anything so intangible as the Saint’s assured bearing.
“Have they been searched?” he asked one of the guard, but it was Simon who answered.
“I gave up my gun when I surrendered.”
“And kept your knife—I remember that trick,” said Bittle.
He himself removed Anna, and by making a thorough examination he found also her twin sister strapped to the Saint’s leg. The discovery pleased him.
“I’m not making any more mistakes, Templar.”
“So glad!” drawled Simon. “May I have my cigarette-case back, please? Anna and Belle aren’t any use to anyone but myself, but the cigarette-case is really silver—I won it in the Open Ludo Tournament at Bournemouth in ’13.”
Bittle examined the case, and, failing to find anything suspicious about it, returned it to the Saint, who replaced it in his hip pocket.