Barney Malone was able to give some supplementary details of Vargan's invention which the sub-editor's blue pencil had cut out as unintelligible to the lay public. They were hardly less unintelligible to Simon Templar, whose scientific knowledge stopped a long way short of Einstein, but he listened attentively.
"It's curious that you should refer to it," Malone said, a little later, "because I was only interviewing the man this morning. He burst into the office about eleven o'clock, storming and raving like a lunatic because he hadn't been given the front page."
He gave a graphic description of the encounter.
"But what's the use?" asked the Saint. "There won't be another war for hundreds of years."
"You think so?"
"I'm told so."
Malone's eyebrows lifted in that tolerantly supercilious way in which a journalist's eyebrows will sometimes lift when an ignorant outsider ventures an opinion on world affairs.
"If you live for another six months," he said, "I shall expect to see you in uniform. Or will you conscientiously object?"
Simon tapped a cigarette deliberately on his thumbnail.
"You mean that?"
"I'm desperately serious. We're nearer to these things than the rest of the public, and we see them coming first. In another few months the rest of England will see it coming. A lot of funny things have been happening lately."
Simon waited, suddenly keyed up to interest; and Barney Malone sucked thoughtfully at his pipe, and presently went on:
"In the last month, three foreigners have been arrested, tried, and imprisoned for offences against the Official Secrets Act.