Saint's Getaway (15 page)

Across the table, Monty Hayward was staring
at him puzzledly, with the last fork-load of egg and bacon poised blankly
in midair. And then, for a
second, his gaze veered over the
Saint’s
shoulder; and he began to understand.

The Saint’s eyes tore themselves away from
the queer fasci
nation of the mirror. On its surface the figures of the
men be
hind had
swollen in grotesque distortion, until he knew that
they were only a yard or two away. He felt their presence even more
vividly after he had ceased to watch them, in an infinitely
gentle little shiver that twitched up his back as
if a couple of
spiders had performed a
rapid polka along his spine. It slith
ered
coldly along his ganglions in a tingle of desperate alert
ness, an instinctive tautening of nerves that was
beyond all human power to control.

He took the cigarette from his mouth and
looked Monty
Hayward squarely in the face. Within that yard or two of
where they
sat, the menace of the Law had loomed up again,
with a suddenness that
took the breath away—a
menace which it had always been so fatally easy
to forget, even if the Saint
himself had never quite forgotten. And Monty
Hayward
looked back at a man who, in some guises, still seemed a stranger to
him. The Saint’s eyes were as hard as flints, cold and blue
and
mercilessly clear; and yet somewhere in their grim depths
there was a
tiny glitter like shifting sunlight, a momentary
twinkle of mockery
that loved the wild twists of the game for
their own sake.

“For many years, Monty,” said the
Saint very quietly and
distinctly, “I’ve been meaning to tell
you the Illuminating
History of Wilbraham, the Wonderful Worm.
Wilbraham was
in the very act of becoming the high tea of a partridge
named
Theobald, when the cruel bird was brought down by a lucky
shot from
the gun of a certain Mr. Hugglesboom, who was a
water-diviner by
profession and generally considered to be eccentric. I said a lucky shot,
because Mr. Hugglesboom be
lieved that he was aiming his weapon at a
rabbit that was nib
bling his young lettuces. On retrieving the bird, Mr.
Hugglesboom discovered Wilbraham in its beak. Being a kind-hearted
gentleman,
he released the unhappy reptile; and he would have thought nothing more about
it, if Wilbraham had not
had other views. Wilbraham, in fact, being
overcome with grat
itude to his deliverer, followed Mr. Hugglesboom home, and
showed such symptoms of devotion that Mr. Hugglesboom’s heart was
touched. A lonely man, he adopted the small crea
ture, and found much
companionship on his solitary travels,
in which Wilbraham
would follow him like a faithful dog.
Shortly afterwards Wilbraham thought
that he might assist
Mr. Hugglesboom in his work. He took it upon
himself to spy
out, by tireless burrowing, the land which his master was
commissioned to survey; with the result that in course of time
Mr.
Hugglesboom attained such eminence in his vocation ——
”

Monty Hayward’s face had run through a
sequence of ex
pressions that would have made a movie director skip like
a
young ram with joy; and then it had gone blank. The meaning
and purpose of that astonishing
cascade of imbecility were
utterly beyond
him. There came to him the hysterical belief
that Simon Templar must have gone suddenly and irrevocably
haywire.
The strain of recent happenings had been too much
for a brain that had never in its life been truly stable.

He looked up dumbly at the two men who were
now stand
ing by the Saint’s oblivious shoulder, and in their faces
he saw
the beginnings of an answering blankness that fairly kicked
him
between the eyes. It was so staggering that for a space of
time he
doubted the evidence of his own senses.

And then it dawned upon him that the two men
were also
listening,
and at the same time running through a gamut of
emotions similar to his own. As the Saint’s beautifully articu
lated phrases reached their ears, their
heavy-footed and pur
poseful advance
had waned away. They had ended up behind the Saint’s chair as if they were
walking over pins; and there they stood, with their mouths hanging open,
sucking in his drivelling discourse with both ears. Their awed entrancement
was so obvious that for an awful interval Monty
Hayward be
gan to wonder whether
after all it was his own brain that had
slipped its trolley.

“The climax came,” said the Saint,
with that flute-like clarity
which did every single thing in its power to
render the words
comprehensible to anyone whose knowledge of English might
leave much fluency to be desired, “at a garden party organized
by Lady
Tigworthy, at which Mr. Hugglesboom was to give a
demonstration of his
art by finding a receptacle of water
which had been carefully hidden in the
grounds. Keeping his
usual rendezvous behind the refreshment
tent, Mr. Huggles
boom was duly accosted by a worm who gave him explicit in
structions;
and shortly afterwards, being a dim-sighted man,
he faithfully made his find directly over
a shiny pink globe
which showed on the lee
side of a grassy knoll. This was discov
ered to be the head of Lord
Tigworthy, who was enjoying an
afternoon
siesta. Mr. Hugglesboom was expelled from the f
ê
te
in disgrace; and the worm, which was
reclining in an intoxi
cated condition
under the tap of a barrel of mild ale, was
thrown after him. It was not until he reached home that Mr.
Hugglesboom perceived that this worm was not
Wilbraham”—
the Saint was
looking Monty rigidly in the eyes—“but
Wilbraham’s twin brother,
who,
filled with jealousy of his luckier
relation,
had gone out of his way to discredit an unblemished
record of unselfish service. Mr. Hugglesboom——
”

Behind him, one of the detectives cleared his
throat apolo
getically, and the Saint glanced round.

He glanced round absolutely at his leisure, as
if he were no
ticing the presence of the detectives for the first time.
He did
it as if they meant nothing whatever in his life, and never
could—with
a smilingly interrogative composure which cost him perhaps more effort than
anything he had done in the last
twenty-four hours.

The detective coughed.

“Excuse me, gentleman,” he said, in
excellent English. “I
am a police officer, and I have to ask you to
give an account
of yourselves.”

Monty Hayward had an insane desire to laugh.
The contrast
between the detectives’ confident march across the room,
and
the almost ingratiating tone of that opening remark, was so
comical
that for a moment it made him forget the tightness of
the corner from which
they had still to make their getaway.

Coolly the Saint shifted his chair round, and
waved an oblig
ing hand.

“Sit down, Sherlock,” he murmured,
“and tell us all your troubles. What’s the matter—has somebody declared
war, or
something?”

Somewhat uncertainly the detective lowered
himself into a
seat, and after a second’s hesitation his companion
followed
suit They looked at one another dubiously, and at length
the
spokesman attempted to explain.

“It is in the matter of a crime that was
committed in Innsbruck last night,
mein Herr.
We received proof that
the crim
inals had reached Munich, and afterwards we believed that
we
had traced them to this hotel. Their descriptions were tele
graphed to
us from Innsbruck. You will pardon me, gentlemen, but the resemblance…”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Good Lord! D’you mean we’re going to be
arrested?”

His startled innocence was beyond criticism.
Every line of
it was etched into his face and his voice with the touch
of a consummate artist. And the detective shrugged.

“Before I spoke to you, I permitted
myself to listen to your
conversation. I hoped to learn something that
would help us.
But after I had listened——
”

“As far as I remember,” said the
Saint puzzledly, “I was be
guiling the time with a highly moral and
uplifting anecdote
about a worm named——
”

“Vilbraham?” suggested the
detective, with a tinge of hu
mour in his homely features. “I admit I
did not appreciate all
the—the——
die Bedeutung
—the what-do-you-say of the story?”

He looked appealingly at the Saint, but Simon
shook his head.
“It is not important. But it is my experience that a
man who had committed a crime so soon ago, and who would expect
every
minute to be arrested, would not talk like that. His mind
is too
worried. Also you did not translate
die Bedeutung
for
me, which
would have been very clever of you if you were one
of the criminals,
because both of them speak German like I
do.”

Simon gazed at him with admiration.

“That was cunning of you,” he said
ingenuously. “But I
suppose that’s part of your job.” He
dropped his cigarette into
a coffee cup and beckoned a passing waiter.
“Have a spot of
Schnapps and let’s see if there’s anything we
can do to clear
up
the difficulty.”

The detective nodded.

“You have your passports?”

The Saint took a blue booklet from his pocket
and dropped
it on the table. The detective turned courteously to
Monty Hay
ward. Something hard was jabbing into the side of Monty’s
thigh: he slipped his hand quite naturally under the table and
grasped
it. He was wide awake now; the whole purpose of the Saint’s two-edged bluff was
plain to him, and his brain was
humming into perfect adaptation.

He slid the passport round behind him and
produced it as
if from his hip pocket. Where it had come from he had no
idea, and
he had even less idea what information it contained;
but he watched it
across the table while the detective turned
the pages, and
gathered that he was George Shelston Ingram, marine architect, of Lowestoft.
The photograph was undoubt
edly his own—he recognized it immediately as
the one from
his own passport, and the evidence of the Saint’s
inexhaustible
thoroughness amazed him. The Saint must have put in an
hour’s
painstaking work before breakfast on that job alone,
faking up the missing part of the Foreign
Office embossments
which linked the
photograph with the new sheet on which it
had been pasted.

The examination was concluded in a few minutes, and the
detectives returned the passports to their
respective claimants
with a slight
bow.

“I have apologized in advance,” he
said briefly. “Now, Mr.
Ingram, will you please tell me your recent movements? One
of our men saw you at the Ostbahnhof this morning,
besides
the one who happened to see you arrive at the hotel. They re
membered you when the descriptions were received;
and it
was near the Ostbahnhof that
the car in which our criminals
escaped
was found.”

“I think I can explain that,” Monty
answered easily. “I’ve
been walking around the country in this neighbourhood, and
last night I ended up at Siegertsbrun. After
dinner I had a
telegram from my brother asking me to meet him in Munich
this morning, and saying it was a matter of life
and death. So
after thinking it over
I caught a very early train and came
straight
here.”

“Your
brother?”

The detective seemed suddenly to have gone out
of control. He sat forward as if he could scarcely contain his excitement.
And Monty
nodded.

“Yes. He’s my twin. If you didn’t grasp
the point of my
friend’s story, I can tell you that he was being
extremely
rude.”

“Donnerwetter!
And where
would he meet you—
Ihr Heir
Bruder?”
“He
said he’d meet me here at ten o’clock; but he hasn’t
turned up yet——
”