Bittle nodded.
“I can only commend your discretion,” he remarked, “as sincerely as I appreciate your simple tastes.”
“Not at all,” murmured the Saint, no less suave. “Would it be troubling you too much to ask for the loan of a pair of bedsocks?”
The Saint was now behind Bittle again. He was standing a bare couple of feet from the millionaire’s head, one hand resting lightly on the back of a small chair. The other hand was holding a bronze statuette up to the light, and the whole pose was so perfectly done that its hidden menace could not have struck the watchers outside until it was too late.
Bittle was a fraction quicker on the uptake. The Saint caught Patricia’s eye and made an almost imperceptible motion towards the window; and at that moment the millionaire’s nerve faltered for a split second, and he began to turn his head. In that instant the Saint sogged the statuette into the back of Bittle’s skull—without any great force, but very scientifically. In another lightning movement, he had jerked up the chair and flung it crashing into the light, and blackness fell on the room with a totally blinding density.
The Saint sprang towards the window.
“Pat!” he breathed urgently.
He touched her groping hand and got the french window open in a trice.
There was a hoarse shouting in the garden and in the corridor, and suddenly the door burst open and a shaft of light fell across the room, revealing the limp form of Bittle sprawled in the arm-chair. A couple of burly figures blocked the doorway, but Patricia and Simon were out of the beam thrown by the corridor lights.
Before she realised what was happening, the girl felt herself snatched up in a pair of steely arms. Within a bare five seconds of the blow that removed Sir John Bittle from the troubles of that evening the Saint was through the window and racing across the lawn, carrying Patricia Holm as he might have carried a child.