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thought; and it was Norman Kent, that aloof and silent
man, who voiced the inspiration of breath-taking genius—or mad ness—that
had been born in Simon Templar’s brain eight hours before.
    “The Cabinet,” said Norman Kent, from
behind a screen of cigarette smoke, “might find the decision taken
out of their hands … without the intervention of Tiny Tim. …”
    Simon Templar looked from face to face.
    For a moment he had an odd feeling that it
was like meet ing the other three again for the first time, as
strangers. Patri cia Holm was gazing through the window at the blue sky above the
roofs of Brook Street, and who is to say what vision she saw there? Roger
Conway, the cheerful and breezy, waited in silence, the smoke
of his neglected cigarette staining his fingers. Norman Kent waited also, serious
and absorbed.
    The Saint turned his eyes to the painting over
the mantel piece, and did not see it.
    “If we do nothing but suppress Tiny
Tim,” he said, “Eng land will possess a weapon of war
immeasurably more power ful than all the armaments of any other
nation. If we stole that away, you may argue that sooner or later some other
na tion will probably discover something just as deadly, and then
England will be at a disadvantage.”
    He hesitated, and then continued in the same
quiet tone.
    “But there are hundreds of Tiny Tims,
and we can’t sup press them all. No secret like that has ever been kept for
long; and when the war came we might very well find the enemy prepared to
use our own weapon against us.”
    Once again he paused.
    “I’m thinking of all the men who’ll fight
in that next war, and the women who love them. If you saw a man drowning, would you refuse to rescue him
because, for all you know, you might only be
saving him for a more terrible death years later?”
    There was another silence; and in it the
Saint seemed to straighten and strengthen and grow, imperceptibly and yet tremendously,
as if something gathered about him which actu ally filled every
corner of the room and made him bulk like a preposterously
normal giant. And, when he resumed, his voice was as soft and
even as ever; but it seemed to ring like a blast of trumpets.
    “There are gathered here,” he said,
“three somewhat shop-soiled musketeers—and a blessed angel. Barring the
blessed angel, we have all of us, in the course of our young lives, broken half
the Commandments and most of the private laws of several countries.
And yet, somehow, we’ve contrived to keep intact certain
ridiculous ideals, which to our perverted minds are a justification for our
sins. And fighting is one of those ideals. Battle and sudden death. In
fact, we must be about the last three men in the wide world who ought to
be interfering with the makings of a perfectly good war. Personally, I sup pose we
should welcome it—for our own private amusement. But there aren’t many
like us. There are too many—far too many—who are utterly different. Men and
boys who don’t want war. Who don’t live for battle, murder, and sudden death. Who
wouldn’t be happy warriors, going shouting and singing and swaggering into the
battle. Who’d just be herded into it like dumb cattle to the slaughter,
drunk with a miser able and futile heroism, to struggle blindly through a few
days of squalid agony and die in the dirt. Fine young lives that don’t
belong to our own barbarous god of battles… . And we’ve tripped over the
plans for the next sacrifice, partly by luck and partly by
our own brilliance. And here we are. We don’t give a damn for
any odds or any laws. Will you think m e quite mad if I put it to you that
three shabby, hell-busting outlaws might, by the grace of God …”
    He left the sentence unfinished; and for a few
seconds no one spoke.
    Then Roger Conway stirred intently.
    “What do you say?” he asked.
    The Saint looked at him.
    “I say,” he answered, “that
this is our picnic. We’ve always known—haven’t we?—at the back of our