Saint's Getaway (10 page)

But since he had been blamelessly landed up
to his neck
in a kind of thieves’ picnic in which the disposal of
corpses
and gagged gunmen was supposed to be merely an elementary
exercise
in initiative, he found himself taking an interest in
the affair which he
tried to persuade himself was purely mor
bid. He frisked
Weissmann’s clothes with an almost profes
sional callousness and
brought a selection of papers back with him to the sitting room.

“While you’re getting your initiative
tuned up,” he said,
“it might be helpful if we knew something
more about Stanis
laus.”

Patricia came and looked over his shoulder as
he ran
through the meagre supply of documents. There were a couple
of letters
on heavily scented pink notepaper, addressed to
Heinrich Weissmann at
the Dome, Boulevard Montparnasse
, Paris, which disclosed nothing of interest
to anyone
wishing to have the strength of ten; a letter of credit
for two thousand marks, issued by the Dresdner Bank in K
ö
ln; the
counterfoil of a sleeping-car ticket from
Zurich to Milan; and
a receipted bill from a hotel in Basle.

“He certainly did his best to shake off
the hue and cry,”
said Monty; “but does it tell us
anything else?”

“What about that?” asked Patricia,
turning over one of the
pink envelopes.

On the flap was a pencilled line of writing:

Zr 12 H K
ö
nigshof

“Room Twelve, Hotel K
ö
nigshof,” Monty translated
promptly.
“Looks as if this was the very place he was making
for.”

The girl bit her lip.

“It’d be a frightful coincidence——
”

“I don’t know. Those squiggly marks in
the corner—they’re
just the sort of pattern a fellow draws at the telephone.
Stan
islaus would naturally have some note of the place where he
was
supposed to deliver the boodle. And there’s no reason why
it
shouldn’t be here. This is the most slap-up hotel for miles
around—the
very place that a super crook would make his headquarters——
”
Monty slewed round in his chair and regarded her expectantly. “Suppose the
Big Noise was sitting
right over our heads?”

Patricia jumped up.

“But that’s just what he is doing, if
that address is right!
Room Twelve is on the first floor. When we came here they
offered us
Eleven, but Simon wouldn’t have it. He tried to get Twelve, which has a fire
escape outside, but it was taken yes
terday——”

“I don’t see that it’s anything to get
excited about, anyway,” said Monty soothingly. “If it’s true, it only
means that another
bunch of toughs may be crashing in here at any moment to
commit a
few more murders.”

“I’m going to run up the fire escape and
see if I can see any
thing.”

Monty looked at her in frank amazement.

For the first instant he thought she was
bluffing. He had instinctively salted down her laconic description of the
Saint’s
inexorable training. And then he saw the recklessness of the smile that
parted her fresh lips, the eager vitality of her slim
body, the
devil-may-care light in her blue eyes; and the ban
tering challenge that
trembled on the tip of his tongue went
unuttered. There was a
living embodiment of Saintliness in
her that startled. He smiled.

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” he
remarked soberly,
“Simon’s a damned lucky man. And you won’t run up
the fire
escape,
because I’m going to.”

He went out onto the lawn, located the
stairway on his left, and groped his way up the narrow iron steps. There was
only
one window on the first floor which could possibly answer the
vague
description he had been given, and no light showed through it. He paused on the
grating beside it and wondered
what on earth he should do next. To scale an
awkward species
of ladder at that hour of the morning in order to inspect
a room, and then to return with the information that it pos
sesses a
window constructed of square panes of glass, struck
him as being an
extraordinarily inane procedure. And he
could see nothing
inside from where he was. There seemed to
be only one
alternative, and that was to insert himself surreptitiously into the room.

Fortunately one of the casements was ajar, and
he opened it wide and clambered over the sill with a silent prayer that
he might
be able to pretend successfully that he was drunk.

Every movement he made appeared to shake the
hotel to its
foundations. The loose change clinked in his pockets like
a
dozen sledge hammers knocking the hell out of a cracked anvil, his
clothes rustled like a forest in a gale, and the sound of
his
breathing seemed loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers
of
Ephesus. The jaws of the prison yawned on every side. He could hear them.

Then his right shin collided with something
hard. He felt
around for the offending object, and presently discovered
it to be a chair lying on its side. Peering puzzledly into the gloom,
he made out
the white outline of the bed. He strained his eyes
at it for some
seconds; and then, with a sudden inspiration,
he walked straight
across the room and switched on the
light.
…

Three minutes later he was back in the suite
below.

“I don’t profess to understand anything
that’s happening to
night,” he said, “but the bird upstairs has
flown. Flown in a
hurry, too, because he’s gone without his coat and
tie.”

Patricia stared.

“But—surely he must have gone to the
bathroom.”

“Not unless he intends to spend the night
there. His door
was shut, and the key was on the table by the bed. That’s
what
they call deduction.”

The girl sat down on the arm of the
Chesterfield with a
frown of perplexity wrinkling her forehead. The
development
required some thinking over.

One thing was as plain as a pikestaff, and she
phrased it
undemonstratively:

“If we sit around here doing nothing,
we’re just asking to
be shot at.”

“Look here, Pat,” said Monty
Hayward, buttressing himself
against the mantelpiece, “we’re between
several fires. Don’t forget that the police have got it in for us as well. And
one of
the chief essentials in a mess like this seems to be to have the
door open
for a clean getaway. Now, what would be the
Saint’s idea about
that?”

“He’d say that the main thing was to
leave no evidence.”

“Right. Then the only serious piece of
evidence is that stiff
in the next room. Whatever happens, we can’t
leave him lying
about. And since we know where he was going, and the
coast
is clear, I should think the best thing we could do is to help
him finish his journey.”

Patricia looked at him thoughtfully.

“You mean, plant him in the room
upstairs——
”

“Exactly. And let the gang he belongs to
take care of him.
It’s about time they had some worries of their own.”

“And what about Ethelbert?”—she
indicated the prisoner
with a movement of her cigarette.

“Put a knife beside him and let him do
the best he can.

Even if they catch him, I don’t think he’ll
have anything to
say. For one thing, Stanislaus seems to have been no
friend of
his; and besides, if he wanted to clear up the mystery,
he’d
have to give an account of what he was doing in here, which wouldn’t be
too easy for him.”

The argument seemed flawless. Patricia herself
could offer
no improvements on the scheme; and she realized that every
wasted minute increased the danger.

She led the way into the bedroom and produced
an electric
flashlamp to light Monty on his gruesome task. Luckily the
external bleeding had been comparatively slight, and no blood
had
penetrated to the bedclothes. Monty picked up the rigid body in his arms and
went out without another word, and she
stayed behind to
straighten the sheets and coverlet.

The feelings of Monty Hayward as he climbed
the fire
escape for the second time were somewhat disordered. He insisted
to himself, on purely logical grounds, that he was scared
stiff; but the emotion somehow
failed to connect amicably with
another
stratum of his immortal soul which was having the
time of its life. He began to ask himself whether
perhaps he
had been missing something
by steadfastly burying himself in
a
respectable existence; and immediately he reflected that the
prospect of being hanged by the neck for other
people’s mur
ders was a damned good
thing to miss anyway. He solemnly
vowed
that the next time he saw a harmless-looking little man being set on by a gang
of thugs, he would raise his hat politely
and pass by on the other side; and simultaneously he felt
rather pleased with himself for the efficiency with
which he
had laid out his opponent.
It was all very difficult; and he
pushed
himself and his grisly luggage through the first-floor
window with some doubts of whether he was really
the same man
who had been placidly quaffing Pilsener at the Brein
ö
ssl
two
hours ago.

After a moment’s deliberation, he laid the
little man artistically down beside the overturned chair, rubbed the chair
with
his sleeve to remove any fingerprints, and stood back to exam
ine his
handiwork. It looked convincing enough… . And
it was then that the
Recording Angel shuddered on his throne and upset the inkpot; for Monty Hayward
gazed at his handi
work and grinned.
…

Then he switched out the light. He hopped
over the window
sill and trotted down the escape with a briskness that
was al
most
rollicking. The glorious company of the Apostles held
their breath.

He was three steps from the bottom when he
saw a shadow
move in the darkness just below, and a hoarse voice chal
lenged
him:

“Wer da?”

Monty’s stomach took a short stroll round his
interior.

Then he stepped down to the ground.

“Hullo, ole pineapple,” he
hiccoughed. “Ishnit lovely night?
Are you the
lighthoushkeeper? Becaush if you are——
”

A light was flashed in his face, and he heard
a startled excla
mation:

“Gott im Himmel! Der Engl
ä
nder, der mich in den Fluss
geworfen
hat——
”

Monty understood, and gasped.

And then, even as it had happened earlier to Simon Templar, the
tattered remnants of his virtue were swept into annihilation like chaff before
a fire. If he were destined for the
scaffold,
so let it be. His boats had been burned for him.

He flung up his arm and knocked the light
aside. As it flew
into the air, he had a fleeting glimpse of the battered
face of the man he had tackled on the bridge, with his one undam
aged eye
bulging and his bruised mouth opening for a shout. He crowded every ounce of
his strength into a left hook to the
protruding chin, and heard the man
drop like a poleaxed ox.

Monty picked him up and carried him into the
sitting
room.
Monty was smiling. He considered that that left hook
was a beauty.

“We were only just in time,” he
said. “This hotel is getting unhealthy.”

The girl looked at him open-mouthed.

“Where was he?”

“Standing at the bottom of the fire
escape, waiting for me.
He’s one of the blokes we threw into the river. I think I can
guess what happened. If the police were waiting to pinch
Stanislaus, they may have been nearly as hot on
the trail of the
man upstairs. They
came dashing along here as soon as they’d
reported to headquarters and borrowed a change of clothes
—you can see this chap’s uniform is too tight for
him. The other
two are probably
interviewing the management and prepar
ing
to break in the door. This one was posted in the garden to
see that their man didn’t make a getaway through
the win
dow.”