"Sorry, son," said the" Saint sincerely, and handed him off with some vim.

Then he was flying up the lane at the girl's side, and the sounds of the injured chauffeur's pursuit were too far behind to be alarming.

The Saint vaulted into the Furillac, and came down with one foot on the self-starter and the other on the clutch pedal.

As Patricia gained her place beside him he unleashed the full ninety-eight horse-power that the speedster could put forth when pressed.

His foot stayed flat down on the accelerator until they were running into Putney, and he was sure that any attempt to give chase had been left far astern; but even during the more sedate drive through London he was still unwontedly taciturn, and Patricia knew better than to try to make him talk when he was in such a mood. But she studied, as if she had never seen it before, the keen, vivid intentness of his profile as he steered the hurtling car through the night, and realised that she had never felt him so sheathed and at the same time shaken with such a dynamic savagery of purpose. Yet even she, who knew him better than anyone in the world, could not have explained what she sensed about him. She had seen, often before, the inspired wild leaps of his genius; but she could not know that this time that genius had rocketed into a more frantic flight than it had ever taken in all his life. And she was silent.

It was not until they were turning into Brook Street that she voiced a thought that had been racking her brain for the past hour.

"I can't help feeling I've seen one of those men before—or a picture of him——"

"Which one?" asked the Saint, a trifle grimly, "The young secretary bird—or Professor K. B. Vargan—or Sir Roland Hale—or Mr. Lester Hume Smith, His Majesty's Secretary of State for War?"