At last he raised his head and his cold eyes swept from Mecklen to Morini, from Morini to Ezra Surcon, _alias_ Bulsaid. "Sure thing--you great little wonderful kid!" he cried, and his hands leapt into view with lightning-like rapidity. Three shots reverberated as one. The men in their chairs, watching, spell-bound, saw Mecklen clutch his chest, sway, and sag to the floor with a long sighing groan. They saw Morini reel back, clawing convulsively at a jaw which Storm's heavy-calibre bullet had smashed and all but torn from its sockets. They saw Storm himself, struck over the breast-bone by Morini's fractional-second-late shot, stagger and then, miraculously recover himself.... And then Storm was on the daïs, shielding Susan with his body. One gun-laden hand, resting on his hip, roved from face to face of the men still sitting as though paralysed, in the body of the room; the other focused on the Apex. "There's my answer! _Now_ crow, you second-hand Gorgonzolas!" he mocked them. CHAPTER XXVII MR. TEAL BUTTS IN The Assistant Commissioner did not leave immediately after Storm had gone. Instead Bill Kennedy and Mr. Teal sat in the Albany talking over many things. And it was when Mr. Kennedy was taking up his gloves preparatory to departure that the telephone bell rang. The Assistant Commissioner took up the receiver. "Is that Captain Arden?" asked a voice. "Yes," said Bill, to save trouble. "I'm speaking from St. George's Hospital. We've got a man here who wants to speak to you urgently. I'm afraid he's dying--they picked him up in Buckingham Gate last night with eight inches of knife in his lungs. He's only just recovered consciousness." "What's his name?" "Sands." Bill Kennedy whistled softly. "Any idea what he wants to say?" "Not much. He'll only speak to you personally. But he keeps muttering something about a triangle and a girl." "I'll be there in eight minutes, laddie," Kennedy stated crisply. As he replaced the instrument he saw that Teal was struggling off the sofa. "Never," said Teal solemnly, "never in my life have I missed anything that was going on worth being present at. If you try to make me break that record, sir, I shall resign this morning. Don't say anything about my shoulder, because there's no bones broken--it's just a flesh wound I'd rather be without, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be tied down in a bath-chair." Bill Kennedy was an excellent judge of time and space. Exactly eight minutes after he had hung up the receiver he was standing beside the death bed of Birdie Sands, that funny, wizened little man. Teal was with him, and they were hidden from the rest of the ward by the screens which in hospitals are placed about the beds of those whose hours are numbered.