"I'll be waiting," she said, catching her breath; "you crazy Quixotic idiot. I'll wait forever."
Then she slammed the door. The taxi roared, bull throated, and leaped forward, bursting a hole in the false wall.
Vickers stared after the diminishing air cab, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I'll be damned," he said softly; "I'll be damned." Then he turned around.
He was just in time to see the first of the Arab guards lunge through the hole in the wall of the embassy.
Vickers hurled his other gas grenade. The egg-shaped glass bomb smashed against the floor. Plumes of the pale green paralysis gas shot upward. But Vickers didn't wait to see its effect.
He left through the hole torn by the air taxi, reached the pavement, began to walk rapidly toward the corner, the snuff-brown burnoose flapping about his ankles.
He had seconds only before the pursuit would develop again. The bomb was a delaying action, no more.
Up ahead he could see a road block, and pedestrians milling around in the street. A net hung from the level above, halting the air traffic. The ISP was on the job.