The Saint in Action by Leslie Charteris, Robert Hilbert; Page A

contemplate: he asked nothing more than to be allowed to stay on as an unquestioning Sancho Panza to this dazzling demigod who could Think of Things with such supernatural ease.
    “Dis is like de good old days,” Hoppy said contentedly ; and the Saint smiled in sympathy.
    “It is, isn’t it? But I never thought I’d be doing it in England.”
    Suddenly the haze of light down the road flared up, blazed into blinding clarity as the headlights of the lorry swung round a bend like searchlights. It was still some distance away, but the road ran practically straight for a mile in either direction, and they were parked in the lee of almost the only scrap of cover on the open moor.
    Simon held up one hand to shield his eyes against the direct glare. He was not looking at the headlights themselves but at a point in the darkness a little to the right of them, waiting for the signal that would identify the lorry beyond any doubt. And while he watched the signal came—four long equal flashes from a powerful electric torch, strong enough for him to see the twinkle of them even with the lorry’s headlights shining towards him.
    The Saint drew a deep breath.
    “Okay,” he said. “You know your stuff, Hoppy. And don’t use that Betsy of yours unless you have to.”
    He flicked his lighter and touched it to the end of the cigarette clipped between his lips. The light thrown upwards by his cupped hands brought out his face for an instant in vivid sculpture—the crisp sweep of black hair, the rakehell lines of cheekbone and jaw, the half smile on the clean-cut reckless mouth, the glimmer of scapegrace humour in the clear and mocking blue eyes. It was a face that fitted with an almost startling perfection, as faces so seldom do, not only into the mission that had brought him there that night but also into all the legends about him. It was a face that made it seem easy to understand why he should be called the Saint and why some people should think of him almost literally like that, while others called him by the same name and thought of him as a devil incarnate. It might have been the face of a highwayman in another age, waiting by the roadside on his black horse for some unsuspecting traveller—only that the power of a hundred horses purred under the bonnet waiting for the touch of his foot and the travellers he was waiting for were not innocent even if they were unsuspecting.
    The flame went out, dropping his face back into the darkness; and as he slipped the lighter back into his pocket he sent the car whirling forward in a short rush, spinning the wheel to swing it at right angles across the road, and stopped it there, with the front wheels a foot from the grass verge on the other side.
    “Let’s go,” said the Saint.
    Hoppy Uniatz was already halfway out of the door on his side. This at least was something he understood. To him the higher flights of philosophy and intellectual attainment might be forever barred; but in the field of pure action, once the objects of it had been clearly and carefully explained to him in short sentences employing only the four or five hundred words which made up his vocabulary, he had few equals. And the Saint grinned as he disembarked on to the macadam and melted sound-‘essly into the night on the opposite side of the road from the one Mr Uniatz had taken.
    The driver of the lorry knew nothing of these preparations until his headlights flooded the Saint’s car strongly enough to make it plain that the roadway was completely blocked. Instinctively he muttered a curse and trod and hauled on the brakes; and the lorry had groaned to a standstill only a yard from the obstacle before he realized that he might have been unwise.
    Even so, there was nothing much else that he could have done unless he had driven blindly on off the road onto the open heath, with the chance of landing himself in a ditch. Belatedly it dawned on him that even that risk might have been preferable to the risk of stopping