Valerie was beside him, and the four uniformed Sons of France who had formed their escort were drawn up on either side of them and behind them.
Bravache was there also. He emphasized his own importance by stopping to very deliberately draw off his gloves before he strolled across to one of the doors that opened off the room where they were. He knocked, turned the handle, and clicked his heels in the doorway as he raised his arm in salute.
"Les prisonniers, mon commandant."
"Trиs bien," answered a voice from the room beyond; and even in those two words the Saint recognized the harsh strident tones that he had heard on the radio in his car — at least a hundred and fifty years ago.
Bravache turned away from the door and clicked his heels again.
"Garde а vous!" he barked.
The escort sprang to attention, but without taking their hands from the butts of their revolvers.
Out of the room, striding past the stiffly drawn up figure of Bravache, came a tall gray-haired man of about fifty-five. He wore the same uniform as the escort, except that there was a double row of coloured ribbons on his breast and his blue shirt had six gold bars on each shoulder. No Frenchman would have needed any introduction to him. That long narrow face with the low forehead and the black piercing eyes and the chin that stuck out like the toe of a boot had been caricatured by a score of artists who tomorrow might be wishing that their talents had been otherwise employed. It was Colonel Raoul Marteau, prospective dictator of France.
And after him came Kane Luker.
Luker glanced at the prisoners without expression, as if he had never seen them before, while Marteau ceremoniously returned the escort's salute. He followed the commandant as he went on to take one of- the chairs behind the long table; and the Saint's old dauntlessly irreverent smile touched his bruised lips.
"You know," he remarked to Valerie, "if Luker only had a barrel organ he'd still be a bloated capitalist. An ordinary organ-grinder thinks himself lucky if he's just got one monkey."
Marteau glanced at Luker inquiringly. Apparently he did not speak English. Translating for him, Luker looked almost amused. And Simon realized that to try and bait Kane Luker was not even worth the waste of breath. He was that uncommon type of man for whom abuse or insolence simply had no meaning: they were inane puerilities, incapable of making the slightest difference to any material issue, therefore not worth the loss of an atom of composure.
Marteau was different. His eyes burned darker, and he rasped an order through thin tense lips; and the escort on Simon's right turned and struck him brutally in the face, and returned woodenly to attention.
The force of the blow staggered the Saint back a pace before he recovered his balance; and the girl gasped and whimpered: "You bloody swine!" The blood boiled in Simon's veins, and his cords cut into his wrists against the fierce strain that tautened his muscles; but it was not the blow that hurt him so much as the humiliation of knowing that any courage he could show would only whet the sadistic contempt of these shining crusaders who made a fetish of their own courage. Yet he kept his face set in its mask of indomitable derision, while his mind said pitilessly: "Presently it 'll be over, but they'll never be able to say that they made me crawl."
Ignoring him after that swift and callous retaliation, Marteau had turned to Bravache.
"They have been searched?" he was asking in French.
"Oui, mon commandant."
"Did you find the photograph?"
"Only a print, mon commandant."
Marteau nodded and sat back with a rudimentary but sufficient gesture towards Luker; and Luker sat forward.
He clasped his hands on the table in front of him and said quietly, with his eyes fixed passionlessly on the Saint: "Mr Templar, among the papers which you secured from Lady Valerie there was a photograph and the negative of that photograph. Where is the negative?"
There was a short silence.
"Go on," said the Saint encouragingly.
"That is all I want you to tell me."
"But you haven't finished yet. Don't you know the formula? You have to describe all the hideous things that'll happen if I don't tell you, and make my blood run cold. The audience expects the thrill."
Luker's expressionlessness did not change. He answered in the same passionless voice.
"A number of hideous things may happen to you in due course, Mr Templar. But for the present I am not concerned with them. I know quite well that you have a temperament which would probably resist interrogation for a long time; and at the moment time is precious. We shall therefore start with Lady Valerie, whose powers of resistance are certainly less than yours. The Sons of France have an excellent treatment for obstinacy. Unless we are given the information we require, Lady Valerie will be tied up over there" — Luker pointed with one hand — "and flogged until we do get it."
The Saint's eyes travelled in the direction indicated by Luker's hand. In the wall to which Luker was pointing there were two iron rings, a yard apart, cemented into the stone about seven feet from the ground. The wall around them was stained a different colour from the rest; and in spite of his jest the Saint felt as if cold fingers crept up his spine.
Lady Valerie looked in the same direction, and her breath caught in her throat.
"But I don't know," she cried out quiveringly. "I don't know what happened to the negative. Simon, I don't know what you did with it!"
"That's true," said the Saint, in a voice of terrible sincerity. "Leave her out of it. She doesn't know. She couldn't tell you, even if you flogged her to death."
He might as well have appealed to a graven image. Luker was not even interested.
"In that case I hope that your natural chivalry will induce you to spare her any unnecessary suffering," he said. "You will of course be allowed to watch the proceedings, so that your sympathies may be fully aroused. A word from you at any time will save her any further — discomfort." He brought his hands together again with an air of finality. "Since I understand that you were proposing to marry Lady Valerie, your affection for her should not encourage you to hesitate."
Simon looked at the girl. She stared back at him, her eyes wide with terrified entreaty.
"Oh, Simon, must I be flogged?" she said faintly.
Her face was white and terror-stricken; her lips trembled so that the words would hardly come out. And yet in a queer way it was plain that she was only asking him to tell her, whatever he might say.
The Saint felt that everything inside him was cold and stiff, as if the rigour of death had already touched him. somehow he kept all weakness out of his face.
He spoke to Marteau in French.
"Monsieur le Commandant, I ask nothing for myself. But you have ideals, and you would wish to be called a gentleman. Will you be proud to record the torture of a helpless girl as the glorious beginning of the revolution in which you believe?"
Marteau's face flushed, but the arrogant unyielding lines deepened around his mouth.
"The individual, monsieur, is of no more importance than an ant compared with the destiny of France." His dark eyes glowed with a mystic light. "Tomorrow — today — we make history, and France takes her rightful place among the nations of Europe. I can give way to no sentimental reluctance to do anything that may be necessary to safeguard the trust which is in my hands. Those who are not with us are our enemies." The glow faded from his eyes, leaving only the hard lines still shifting about his mouth. "As a man, I confess that I should prefer to spare Mademoiselle; but that responsibility is yours. As a leader, with the destiny of France in my care, my own course cannot falter."