"Love, your magic spell is everywhere . . ."
GAY, MOCKING, cavalier, the old original Saintly voice! And there was nothing but a mischievous laughter in the clear blue eyes that gazed so delightedly at Marius across the room—nothing but the old hell-for-leather Saintly mirth. Yet the Saint stood there unarmed and at bay; and Roger knew then that the loss of his own gun made little difference, for Hermann was safely sheltered behind the girl and his Browning covered the Saint without a tremor.
And Simon Templar cared for none of these things. . . . Lot's wife after the transformation scene would have looked like an agitated eel on a hot plate beside him. By some trick of his own inimitable art, he contrived to make the clothes that had been through so many vicissitudes that night look as if he had just taken them off his tailor's delivery van; his smiling freshness would have made a rosebud in the morning dew appear to wear a positively debauched and scrofulous aspect; and that blithe, buccaneering gaze travelled round the room as if he were reviewing a rally of his dearest friends. For the Saint in a tight corner had ever been the most entrancing and delightful sight in all the world. . . .
"And there's Roger. How's life, sonny boy? Well up on its hind legs—what? . . . Oh, and our one and only Ike! Sonia—your boy friend."
But Lessing's face was gray and drawn.
"So it was true, Marius!" he said huskily.
"Sure it was," drawled the Saint. "D'you mean to say you didn't believe old Roger? Or did Uncle Ugly tell you a naughty story?" And again the Saint beamed radiantly across at the motionless giant. "Your speech, Angel Face: 'Father, I cannot tell a lie. I am the Big Cheese.' . . . Sobs from pit and gallery. But you seem upset, dear heart— and I was looking to you to be the life and soul of the party. 'Hail, smiling morn,' and all that sort of thing."
Then Marius came to life.
For a moment his studied impassivity was gone altogether. His face was the contorted face of a beast; and the words he spat out came with the snarl of a beast; and the gloating leer on the lips of the man Hermann froze where it grimaced, and faded blankly. And then the Saint intervened.
"Hermann meant well, Angel Face," he murmured peaceably; and Marius swung slowly round.
"So you have escaped again, Templar," he said.
"In a manner of speaking," agreed the Saint modestly. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
He took out his cigarette case, and the giant's mouth writhed into a ghastly grin.
"I have heard about your cigarettes," he said. "Give those to me!"
"Anything to oblige," sighed the Saint.
He wandered over, with the case in his hand, and Marius snatched it from him. The Saint sighed again, and settled himself on the edge of the big desk, with a scrupulous regard for the crease in his trousers. His eye fell on the box of cigars, and he helped himself absent-mindedly.
Then Lessing was facing Marius.
"What have you to say now?" he demanded; and the last atom of emotion drained out of Marius's features as he looked down at the millionaire.
"Nothing at all, Sir Isaac." Once again that thin, soft voice was barren of all expression, the accents cold and precise and unimpassioned. "You were, after all, correctly informed—in every particular."
"But—my God, Marius! That war—everything —— Do you realize what this means?"
"I am perfectly well aware of all the implications, my dear Sir Isaac."
"You were going to make me your tool in that ——"
"It was an idea of mine. Perhaps even now ——"
"You devil!"
The words bit the air like hot acid; and Marius waved protesting and impatient hands.
"My dear Sir Isaac, this is not a Sunday school. Please sit down and be quiet for a moment, while I attend to this interruption.''
"Sit down?" Lessing laughed mirthlessly. The stunned incredulity in his eyes had vanished, to be replaced by something utterly different. "I'll see you damned first! What's more, I'm going to put you in an English prison for a start—and when you come out of that I'll have you hounded out of every capital in Europe. That's my answer!"
He turned on his heel.
Between him and the door Hermann still held the girl. And Roger Conway stood beside her.
"One moment."
Marius's voice—or something else—brought Lessing up with a snap, and the millionaire faced slowly round again. And, as he turned, he met a stare of such pitiless malevolence that the flush of fury petrified in his face, leaving him paler than before.
"I am afraid you cannot be allowed to leave immediately, my dear Sir Isaac," said the giant silkily; and there was no mistaking the meaning of the slight movement of the automatic in his hand. "A series of accidents has placed you in possession of certain information which it would not suit my purpose to permit you to employ in the way which you have just outlined. In fact, I have not yet decided whether you will ever be allowed to leave."
THE SAINT cleared his throat.
"The time has come," he remarked diffidently, "for me to tell you all the story of my life."
He smiled across at Lessing; and that smile and the voice with it, slashed like a blast of sunshine through the tenuous miasma of evil that had spawned into the room as Marius spoke.
"Just do what Angel Face told you, Sir Isaac," said the Saint winningly. "Park yourself in a pew and concentrate on Big Business. Just think what a half-nelson you'll have on the Banana Oil market when Angel Face has unloaded his stock. And he won't hurt you, really. He's a plain, blunt man, and I grant you his face is against him, but he's a simple soul at heart. Why, many's the time we've sat down to a quiet game of dominoes—haven't we, Angel Face?—and all at once, after playing his third double-six, he's said, in just the same dear dreamy way: 'Templar, my friend, have you never thought that there is something embolismal about Life?' And I've said, brokenly: 'It's all so—so umbilical. ' Just like that. 'It's all so umbilical. . . .' Doesn't it all come back to you, Angel Face?"
Marius turned to him.
"I have never been amused by your humour, Templar" he said. "But I should be genuinely interested to know how you have spent the evening."
All the giant's composure had come back, save for the vindictive hatred that burned on in his eyes like a lambent fire. He had been secure in the thought that the Saint was dead, and then for a space the shock of seeing the Saint alive had battered and reeled and ravaged his security into a racketing chaos of raging unbelief; and at the uttermost nadir of that havoc had come the cataclysmic apparition of Sonia Delmar herself, entering that very room, to overwhelm his last tattered hope of bluff and smash down the ripening harvest of weeks of brilliant scheming and intrigue into one catastrophic devastation; and he had certainly been annoyed. . . . Yet not for an instant could his mind have contained the shred of an idea of defeat. He stood there by the desk where the Saint sat, a poised and terrible colossus; and behind that unnatural calm the brain of a warped genius was fighting back with brute ferocity to retrieve the irretrievable disaster. And Simon looked at him, and laughed gently.
"To-night's jaunt," said the Saint, "is definitely part of the story of my life."
"And of how many more of your friends?"
Simon shook his head.
"You never seem to be able to get away from the distressing delusion that I am.some sort of gang," he murmured. "I believe we've had words about that before. Saint Roger Conway you've met. That in the middle is a new recruit—Saint Isaac Lessing, Regius Professor of Phlebology at the University of Medicine Hat and Consulting Scolecophagist to the Gotherington Gasworks, recently canonized for his article in The Suffragette advocating more clubs for women. 'Clubs, tomahawks, flat-irons, anything you like,' he said. . . . And here we all are."
"And how many more?" repeated Marius.
"Isn't that quite clear?" sighed the Saint. "There are no more. Let me put it in words of one syllable. The unadulterated quintessence of nihility ——"
Savagely Marius caught his arm in one gigantic hand, and the Saint involuntarily tensed his muscles.
"Not that way, Angel Face," he said softly. "Or there might be a vulgar brawl. ..."
Yet perhaps it was that involuntary tensing of an arm of leather and iron, rather than the change in the Saint's voice, that made Marius loose his grip. With a tremendous effort the giant controlled him self again, and his lips relaxed from the animal snarl that had distorted them; only the embers of his fury still glittered in his eyes.
"Very good. There are no more of you. And what happened on the ship?"
"Well, we went for a short booze—cruise."
"And the man who was shot in the motorboat— was he another of your friends?"
Simon surveyed the ash on his cigar approvingly.
"One hates to cast aspersions on the dead," he answered, "but I can't say that we ever became what you might call bosom pals. Not," said the Saint conscientiously, "that I had anything against the man. We just didn't have the chance to get properly acquainted. In fact, I'd hardly given him the first friendly punch on the jaw, and dumped him in that motorboat to draw the fire, when some of the sharpshooting talent pulled the voix celeste stop on him for ever. I don't even know his name; but he addressed me in Grand Opera, so if your ice-cream plant is a bit diminuendo ——"
Hermann spoke sharply.
"It was Antonio, mein Herr! He stayed on the beach after we took the girl down ——"
"So!" Marius turned again. "It was one of my own men!"
"Er—apparently," said the Saint with sorrow.
"And you were already on the ship?"
"Indeed to goodness. But only just." The Saint grinned thoughtfully. "And then I met Comrade Vassiloff—a charming lad, with a beautiful set of hairbrushes. We exchanged a little backchat, and then I tied him up and passed on. Then came the amusing error."
"What was that?"
"You see, it was a warm evening, so I'd borrowed Comrade Vassiloff's coat to keep the heat out. The next cabin I got into was the captain's and he promptly jumped to the conclusion that Comrade Vassiloff was still inhabiting the coat."
Marius stiffened.
"Moeller! The man always was a fool! When I meet him again ——"
The Saint shook his head.
"What a touching scene it would have been!" he murmured. "I almost wish it could come true. . . . But it cannot be. I'm afraid, Angel Face, that Captain Moeller has also been translated."
"You killed him?"
"That's a crude way of putting it. Let me explain. Overcome with the shock of discovering his mistake, he went slightly bughouse, and seemed to imagine that he was a seagull. Launching himself into the empyrean—oh, very hot, very hot!—he disappeared from view, and I have every reason to believe that he made a forced landing a few yards farther on. As I didn't know how to stop the ship ——"
"When was this?"
"Shortly after the ceremony. That was the amusing error. When I rolled into his cabin Sonia was there as well, and there was a generally festive air about the gathering. The next thing I knew was that I was married." He saw Marius start, and laughed softly. "Deuced awkward, wasn't it, Angel Face?"
He gazed at Marius benevolently; but, after that first unpurposed recoil, the giant stood quite still. The only one in the room who moved was Lessing, who came slowly to his feet, his eyes on the girl.
"Sonia—is that true?"
She nodded, without speaking; and the millionaire sank back again, white-faced.
The Saint slewed round on his perch, and it was at Roger that he looked.
"It was quite an unofficial affair," said the Saint deliberately. "I doubt if the Archbishop of Canterbury would have approved. But the net result ——"
"Saint!"
Roger Conway took a pace forward, and the name was cried so fiercely that Simon's muscles tensed again. And then the Saint's laugh broke the hush a second time, with a queer blend of sadness and mockery.
"That's all I wanted," said the Saint; and Roger fell back, staring at him.
But the Saint said no more. He deposited an inch and a half of ash in an ashtray, flicked a minute flake of the same from his knee, adjusted the crease in his trousers, and returned his gaze again to Marius.
Marius had taken no notice of the interruption. For a while longer he continued to stare fixedly at the Saint; and then, with an abrupt movement, he turned away and began to pace the room with huge, smooth strides. And once again there was silence.
The Saint inhaled meditatively.
An interval of bright and breezy badinage, he realized distinctly, had just been neatly and unobtrusively bedded down in its appointed niche in the ancient history of the world, and the action of the piece was preparing to resume. And the coming action, by all the portents, was likely to be even brighter and breezier than the badinage—in its own way.
Thus far Simon Templar had to admit that he had had all the breaks; but now Rayt Marius was definitely in play. And the Saint understood, quite quietly and dispassionately, as he had always understood these things, that a succulent guinea pig in the jaws of a lion would have been considered a better risk for life insurance than he. For the milk of human kindness had never entered the reckoning—on either side—and now that Marius had the edge ... As the Saint watched the ruthless, deliberate movements of that massive neolithic figure, there came back to him a vivid recollection of the house by the Thames where they had faced each other at the close of the last round, and of the passing of Norman Kent . . . and the Saint's jaw tightened a little grimly. For between them now there was infinitely more than there had been then. Once again the Saint had wrecked a cast-iron hand at the very moment when failure must have seemed impossible; and he had never thought of the giant as a pious martyr to persecution. He knew, in that quiet and dispassionate way, that Marius would kill him—would kill all of them—without a moment's compunction, once it was certain that they could not be more useful to him alive.
Yet the Saint pursued the pleasures of his cigar as if he had nothing else to think about. In his life he had never walked very far from sudden death; and it had been a good life.... It was Lessing who broke first under the strain of that silence. The millionaire started up with a kind of gasp.
"I'm damned if I'll stay here like this!" he babbled. "It's an outrage! You can't do things like this in England."
Simon looked at him coldly.
"You're being obvious, Ike," he remarked, "and also futile. Sit down."
"I refuse ——"
Lessing swung violently away towards the door; and even the Saint could not repress a smile of entirely unalloyed amusement as the millionaire fetched up dead for the second time of asking before the discourteous ugliness of Hermann's automatic.
"You'll pick up the rules of this game as we go along, Ike," murmured the Saint consolingly; and then Marius, whose measured pacing had not swerved by a hair's breadth for Lessing's protest, stopped by the desk with his finger on the bell.
"I have decided," he said; and the Saint turned with a seraphic smile.
"Loud and prolonged applause," drawled the Saint.
He stood up; and Roger Conway, watching the two men as they stood there eye to eye, felt a queer cold shiver trickle down his spine like a drizzle of ghostly icicles.
JUST FOR A COUPLE of seconds it lasted, that clash of eyes—as crisp and cold as a clash of steel. Just long enough for Roger Conway to feel, as he had never felt before, the full primitive savagery of the volcanic hatreds that seethed beneath the stillness. He felt that he was a mere spectator at the climax of a duel to the death between two reincarnate paladins of legend; and for once he could not resent this sense of his own unimportance. There was something prodigious and terrifying about the culmination of that epic feud—something that made Roger pray blasphemously to awake and find it all a dream. . . . And then the Saint laughed; the Saint didn't give a damn; and the Saint said: "You're a wonderful asset to the gayety of nations, Angel Face."
With a faint shrug Marius turned away, and he was placidly lighting a fresh cigar when the door opened to admit three men in various stages of undress.
Simon inspected them interestedly. Evidently the household staff was not very large, for he recognized two of the three at once. The bullet-headed specimen in its shirt-sleeves, unashamedly rubbing the sleep out of its eyes with two flabby fists, was obviously the torpescent and bibulous Bavarian who had spoken so yearningly of his bed. Next to him, the blue-chinned exhibit without a tie, propping itself languidly against a bookcase, could be identified without hesitation as the Bowery Boy who was a suffering authority on thirsts. The third argument for a wider application of capital punishment was a broken-nosed and shifty-eyed individual whom the Saint did not know— nor, having surveyed it comprehensively, did Simon feel that his life had been a howling wilderness until the moment of that meeting.
It was to Broken Nose that Marius spoke.
"Fetch some rope, Prosser," he ordered curtly, "and tie up these puppies."
"Spoken like a man, Angel Face," murmured the Saint approvingly as Broken Nose departed.
"You think of everything, don't you? . . . And may one ask what you've decided?"
"You shall hear, "he said.
The Saint bowed politely and returned to the serene enjoyment of his cigar. Outwardly he remained as unperturbed as he had been throughout the interview, but all his faculties were tightening up again into cool coordination and razor-edged alertness. Quietly and inconspicuously he flexed the muscles of his forearm—just to feel the reassuring pressure of the straps that secured the little leather sheath of Belle. When Hermann had taken his gun he had not thought of Belle; nor, since then, had the thought seemed to occur to Marius; and with Belle literally up his sleeve the Saint felt confident of being able to escape from any system of roping that might be employed—provided he was left unobserved for a few minutes. But there were others to think of—particularly the girl. Simon stole a glance at her. Hermann still held her with her right arm twisted up behind her back— holding her like that, in the back seat, he had forced the Saint to drive the car back. "And if you do not behave, English swine," he had said, "I will break the arm." It had been the same on the walk up the long drive. "If you escape, and I do not shoot you, English swine, she will scream until you return." Hermann had the most sweet and endearing inspirations, thought the Saint, with his heart beating a little faster; and then his train of thought was interrupted by the return of Mr. Prosser in charge of a coil of rope.
As he placed his hands helpfully behind his back the Saint's thoughts switched off along another line. And that line ranged out in the shape of a series of question marks towards the decision of Marius which he had yet to hear. From the first he had intended to make certain that the giant's machinations should this time be ended for ever, not merely checked, and with this object he had been prepared to take almost any risk in order to discover what other cards Marius might have to play; and now he was surely going to get his wish. . . . Though what the revelation could possibly be was more than Simon Templar could divine. That there could be any revelation at all, other than the obvious one of revenge, Simon would not have believed of anyone but Marius. The game was smashed—smithereened—blown to ten different kinds of Tophet. There couldn't be any way of evading the fact—unless Marius, with Lessing in his power, had conceived some crazy idea of achieving by torture what cunning had failed to achieve. But Marius couldn't be such a fool. . . .
The rope expert finished his task, tested the knots, and passed on to Roger Conway; and the Saint shifted over to the nearest wall and lounged there elegantly. Marius had seated himself at the desk, and nothing about him encouraged the theory that he was merely plotting an empty vengeance. After a brief search through a newspaper which he took from the wastebasket beside him, he had spread out a large-scale map on the desk in front of him and taken some careful measurements; and now, referring at intervals to an open time-table, he was making some rapid calculations on the blotter at his elbow. The Saint watched him thoughtfully; and then Marius looked up, and the sudden sneering glitter in his eyes showed that he had misconstrued the long silence and the furrows of concentration that had corrugated the Saint's forehead.
"So you are beginning to realize your foolishness, Templar?" said the giant sardonically. "Perhaps you are beginning to understand that there are times when your most amusing bluff is wasted? Perhaps you are even beginning to feel a little— shall we say—uneasy?"
The Saint beamed.
"To tell you the truth," he murmured, "I was composing one of my celebrated songs. This was in the form of an ode on the snags of life which Angel Face could overcome with ease and grace. The limpness of asparagus meant nothing to our Marius: not once did he, with hand austere, drip melted butter in his ear. And with what maestria did Rayt inhale spaghetti from the plate! Pursuing the elusive pea ——"
For a moment the giant's eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair; and then, with a short laugh, he relaxed again and picked up the pencil that had slipped from his fingers.
"I will deal with you in a moment," he said. "And then we shall see how long your sense of humor will last."
"Just as you like, old dear," murmured the Saint affably. "But you must admit that Ella Wheeler Wilcox has nothing on me."
He leaned back once more against the wall and watched Broken Nose getting busy with the girl. Roger and Lessing had already been attended to. They stood side by side—Lessing with glazed eyes and an unsteady mouth, and Roger Conway pale and expressionless. Just once Roger looked at the girl, and then turned his stony gaze upon the Saint, and the bitter accusation in that glance cut Simon like a knife. But Sonia Delmar had said nothing at all since she entered the room, and even now she showed no fear. She winced, once, momentarily, when the rope expert hurt her; and once, when Roger was not looking at her, she looked at Roger for a long time; she gave no other sign of emotion. She was as calm and queenly in defeat as she had been in hope; and once again the Saint felt a strange stirring of wonder and admiration. . . .
But—that could wait. ... Or perhaps there would be nothing to wait for. ... The Saint became quietly aware that the others were waiting for him—that there was more than one reason for their silence. Even as two of them had followed him blindly into the picnic, so they were now looking to him to take them home. . . . The fingers of the Saint's right hand curled tentatively up towards his left sleeve. He could just reach the hilt of his little knife; but he released it again at once. The only chance there was lay in those six inches of slim steel, and if that were lost he might as well ask permission to sit down and make his will: he had to be sure of his time.. . .
At length the rope expert had finished, and at the same moment Marius came to the end of his calculations and leaned back in his chair. He looked across the room.
"Hermann!"
"Ja, mein Herr?"
"Give your gun to Lingrove and come here."
Without moving off the bookcase the Bowery Boy reached out a long arm and appropriated the automatic lethargically; and Hermann marched over to the desk and clicked his heels.
And Marius spoke.
He spoke in German; and, apart from Hermann and the somnolent Bavarian, Simon Templar was probably the only one in the room who could follow the scheme that Marius was setting forth in cold staccato detail. And that scheme was one of such a stupendous enormity, such a monstrous inhumanity, that even the Saint felt an icy thrill of horror as he listened.
HE STARED, FASCINATED, at the face of Hermann, taking in the shape of the long narrow jaw, the hollow cheeks, the peculiar slant of the small ears, the brightness of the sunken eyes. The man was a fanatic, of course—the Saint hadn't realized that before. But Marius knew it. The giant's first curt sentences had touched the chords of that fanaticism with an easy mastery; and now Hermann was watching the speaker raptly, with one high spot of colour burning over each cheek-bone, and the fanned flames of his madness flickering in his gaze. And the Saint could only stand there, spellbound, while Marius's gentle, unimpassioned voice repeated his simple instructions so that there could be no mistake. . . .
It could only have taken five minutes altogether; yet in those five minutes had been outlined the bare and sufficient essentials of an abomination that would set a torch to the powder magazine of Europe and kindle such a blaze as could only be quenched in smoking seas of blood. . . . And then Marius had finished, and had risen to unlock a safe that stood in one corner of the room; and the Saint woke up.
Yet there was nothing that he could do—not then. . . . Casually his eyes wandered round the room, weighing up the grouping and the odds; and he knew that he was jammed—jammed all to hell. He might have worked his knife out of its sheath and cut himself loose, and that knife would then have kissed somebody good night with unerring accuracy; but it wouldn't have helped. There were two guns against him, besides the three other hoodlums who were unarmed; and Belle could only be thrown once. If he had been alone, he might have tried it—might have tried to edge round until he could stick Marius in the back and take a lightning second shot at the Bowery Boy from behind the shelter of that huge body—but he was not alone. . . . And for a moment, with a deathly soberness, the Saint actually considered that idea in despite of the fact that he was not alone. He could have killed Marius, anyway—and that fiendish plot might have died with Marius— even if Lessing and Roger and Sonia Delmar and the Saint himself also died. . . .
And then Simon realized, grimly, that the plot would not have died. To Hermann alone, even without Marius, the plot would always have been a live thing. And again the Saint's fingers fell away from his little knife.. . .
Marius was returning from the safe. He carried two flat metal boxes, each about eight inches long, and Hermann took them from him eagerly.
"You had better leave at once." Marius spoke again in English, after a glance at the clock. "You will have plenty of time—if you do not have an accident."
"There will be no accident, mein Herr."
"And you will return here immediately."
"Jawohl!"
Hermann turned away, slipping the boxes into the side pockets of his coat. And, as he turned, a new light was added to the glimmering madness in his eyes; for his turn brought him face to face with the Saint.
"Once, English swine, you hit me."
"Yeah." Simon regarded the man steadily. "I'm only sorry, now, that it wasn't more than once."
"I have not forgotten, pig," said Hermann purringly; and then, suddenly, with a bestial snarl, he was lashing a rain of vicious blows at the Saint's face. "You also will remember," he screamed, "that I hit you—pig—like that—and that—and that. . . ."
It was Marius who caught and held the man's arms at last.
"Das ist genug, Hermann. I will attend to him myself. And he will not hit you again."
"Das ist gut." Panting, Hermann drew back. He turned slowly, and his eyes rested on the girl with a gloating leer. And then he marched to the door. "I shall return, werter Herr," he said thickly; and then he was gone.
Marius strolled back to the desk and picked up his cigar. He gazed impassively at the Saint.
"And now, Templar," he said, "we can dispose of you." He glanced at Roger and Lessing. "And your friends,'' he added.
There was the faintest tremor of triumph in his voice, and for an instant the Saint felt a qualm of desperate fear. It was not for himself, or for Roger. But Hermann had been promised a Reward. ...
And then Simon pulled himself together. His head was clear—Hermann's savage attack had been too unscientific to do more than superficial damage—and his brain had never seemed to function with more ruthless crystalline efficiency in all his life. Over the giant's shoulder he could see the clock; and that clock face, with the precise position of the hands, printed itself upon the forefront of the Saint's mind as if it had been branded there with red-hot irons. It was exactly twenty-eight minutes past two. Four hours clear, and a hundred and fifteen miles to go. Easy enough on a quiet night with a powerful car—easy enough for Hermann. But for the Saint. ... for the Saint, every lost minute sped the world nearer to a horror that he dared not contemplate. He saw every facet of the situation at once, with a blinding clarity, as he might have seen every facet of a pellucid jewel suspended in the focus of battery upon battery of thousand-kilowatt sun arcs—saw everything that the slightest psychological fluke might mean— heard, in imagination, the dry, sarcastic welcome of his fantastic story. . . . Figures blazed through his brain in an ordered spate—figures on the speedometer of the Hirondel, trembling past the hairline in the little window where they showed— seventy-five—eighty—eighty-five. . . . Driving as only he could drive, with the devil at his shoulder and a guardian angel's blessing on the road and on the tires, he might average a shade over fifty. Give it two hours and a quarter, then—at the forlorn minimum. . . .
And once again the Saint looked Marius in the eyes, while all these things were indelibly graven upon a brain that seemed to have been turned to ice, so clear and smooth and cold it was. And the Saint's smile was very Saintly.
"I hope," he drawled, "that you've invented a really picturesque way for me to die."