Saint's Getaway (16 page)

“You have this telegram?”

“No—I didn’t keep it. But——
”

“From where was it despatched?”

“From Jenbach.” Monty’s resentment
had plainly been boil
ing up against the hungry rattle of
questions, and at that point
he exploded. “Damn it, are you suggesting that my brother is
a crook?”

The detective hunched his shoulders. An
inscrutable hard
ness had crept in under the amiable fleshiness of his
face. He
retorted with the dehumanized bluntness of official
logic.

“It is a matter of probability. You are so much alike. Also
this telegram was sent from Jenbach, where the
criminals have
last been seen. For
them it is certainly a matter of life and
death.”

In the silence that followed, the waiter
returned and set up
the
drinks which had been ordered. Simon flicked a note onto
bis tray and dismissed him with curt gesture. He
slid the glasses
round in front of the
detectives and looked from them to
Monty
and then back again.

“This is serious,” he said. “Are you quite sure you
haven’t
made a mistake?”

“That is to be discovered. But it is
strange that Mr. Ingram’s brother has not yet arrived.”

The reply was unexceptionably polite. And
just as incontestably
it declined to be drawn into abstract
argument. It
slammed up one stark circumstance, and invited
explanations
that would convince a jury—nothing less.

Simon took a fresh cigarette from the packet
on the table
and slouched back in his pew, watching the two detectives
like
a hawk. There was not an atom of tension in his poise, not
one
visible quiver of a muscle to flash hints of danger to a sus
picious
man, and under the smooth, level brows bis eyelids
drooped no more than
thoughtfully against the smoke; but
behind that droop the eyes were alive with frozen steel.
His
right arm was crooked lazily round the
chair back, but the
hand hung less
than an inch from his gun pocket.

“It does seem odd,” he drawled.

The keen gaze of the detective who had done
all the talk
ing searched his face.

“Were you travelling with Mr.
Ingram?” he inquired.

“Yeah.”

The Saint picked up his glass and turned the stem between
his fingers. The hand that held it was rock-firm,
and he re
turned the chief detective’s direct stare without a tremor;
and yet his heart was putting in perhaps two extra beats per min
ute above its normal rhythm. He knew to the
millionth part
of an inch how slender
was the thread by which their getaway
still
hung. The crisis of their bluff was pelting into them with
less than a
handful of split seconds left to run—and he had
known all the time that it was coming. It had been on its way
from the first word with all the inevitablity of
an inrushing
tide. Simon had expected nothing else. He had won the only
stakes it had been played for—the fifteen
minutes’ grace which
had been given,
the awakening of doubts in the detectives’
minds, the vital cue to Monty and the two police officers sitting
there quietly at the table.

“You came here from Siegertsbrun together?”

The eyes had never wavered from the
scrutiny. Neither had
Simon Templar’s.

The Saint raised his glass.

“Cheerio,” he said.

Almost mechanically the other groped around and took up
his own drink. His colleague did the same. Both
of them were looking at the Saint. He could see the ideas that were working
simultaneously through their minds. They had
recovered from
the first stunning
confusion of the bluff, and now in the reaction they were thinking on top
gear—turning the defense over
under the searchlights of habitual
incredulity, probing remorselessly into its structure, reading behind it into
the bal
ance of probabilities.

And yet they drank. They ignored the
customary clinking of glasses, and their perfunctory bows were so slight as to
be al
most imperceptible.

“Ihre Gesundheit!”

Simon put down his glass and drew
thoughtfully on his ciga
rette. At that moment he could have laughed.

“No, brother,” he said gently.
“We missed Siegertsbrun. But
we had a swell time in
Innsbruck.” He smiled sweetly at the startled bulging of the detectives’
eyes, and on the tablecloth
their empty glasses seemed to rise on tiptoe
and cheer for him.
“It’s
been lovely meeting you, and I hope this chat won’t get
you into trouble at headquarters.”

The nearest man half rose from his chair, and
the Saint
stepped swiftly up and caught him as he went limp.

Simon wrung him affectionately by the hand.
He slapped
him on
the back. He gripped him by the shoulders and bade him an exuberantly cordial
farewell. And in so doing he set
tled the man
carefully back into his chair, lumped him forward, propped his chin up on his
hand, and left him huddled
in a
lifelike pose of contemplation.

“Be good, brother,” said the Saint, “and remember
me to
auntie. Give my love to
Rudolf”—out of the corner of his eye
the Saint saw that Monty had arranged the other detective in
a similar position—“and tell him I hope it
chokes him. Tootle
pip.”

They walked quickly across the dining room
and paused to glance backwards from the door. The two detectives at the far
corner
table, with their backs turned to the room, appeared
like a couple of
Bavarian Buddhas wrapped in immortal
meditations.

Simon smiled again.

“Such is life,” he whispered.

Then he moved out into the vestibule. As they
emerged into
the hall the Saint glanced casually about him, and in that
same casual way his glance rested for a long moment on the
back of a
man who was leaning over the janitor’s desk by the main doors. He was talking
earnestly to the head porter, and a long jade cigarette holder was tilted up in
the fingers of one
sensitive white hand.

VII.
    
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR BORROWED A CAR

AND AGREED TO BE SENSIBLE

SIMON’S long arm shot out and grabbed Monty by the shoul
der,
halting him in his stride and spinning him half round. The
Saint’s eyes were debonair.

“Steady, old scout,” murmured the
Saint blithely. “This is
where you go home!”

Monty’s brow crinkled. And the Saint laughed.
The laugh
was almost silent; and not one syllable of what he said
could
have been heard a yard away.

“Buzz up and collect Pat and all the
luggage,” said the Saint
quietly. “Get down by the fire
escape—you’re good at that.
And I’ll see you at the station.” He
jerked a thin sheaf of reser
vations from his pocket and thrust them neatly
into Monty’s
hand. “If you want to know why, you can peep back on
your
way up the stairs. You might even listen for a bit—but I
shouldn’t
wait too long. The train goes in fifteen minutes.
Happy landings!”

The same shoulder-hold sped Monty on; and the
Saint cir
cled slowly on his heel and continued his stroll across
the floor.

Looking back from a flight of stairs that was
partly screened
by the iron grille of the elevator shaft, Monty had an
angle
view of him coming up behind the man who was still standing
by the
porter’s desk. The Saint’s hands were in his pockets, and his step was airy. He
stopped just one pace from the desk, and
his voice floated
softly up across the hall.

“What ho!” said the Saint.

The man at the desk turned.

It was typical of his iron self-restraint that he placed the tip
of the long cigarette holder between his teeth
before he moved.
He turned round
without a trace of hurry or excitement, and
his recognition of the Saint was the merest flutter of a pencilled
eyebrow.

“My dear Mr. Templar!”

The Saint’s hands sank deeper into his
pockets.

“My dear Rudolf!” There was a
suggestion of sardonic mimi
cry in the Saint’s reply. “Are you
staying here?”

The cigarette glowed evenly in its jade setting.

“I was looking for a friend,” said
the Crown Prince.

Simon gazed at him mockingly. He had hardly
expected to renew his acquaintance with the prince quite so soon; and yet
the
conversation he had had with the detectives who now slept peacefully in the
dining room had illuminated many mysteries.
It had indicated,
amongst other things, that Rudolf was a
worker with a classic turn of speed in his
own class—if the
Saint had required any
enlightenment on that subject. Certain
facts
had been mentioned in that conversation which could
never have been known to the police without
Rudolf’s assist
ance. And Simon was
wondering what new subtleties were being corkscrewed into the delicate
tangle—what new stratagems
were
unwinding themselves behind the statuesque placidity of
the smiling chevalier opposite him. But the
Saint’s face showed
nothing.

“Have you any friends?” he asked
guilelessly.

The prince laughed. He took Simon engagingly by the arm.

“There is a quiet corner over there
where we can talk. It
would be worth your while.”

“D’you think so?” drawled the
Saint.

He sauntered indulgently towards an alcove
adorned with
three
glass-topped tables and a litter of old newspapers, and
the prince stayed beside him. As they went, the Saint sidled an
eye
up the stairway and saw that Monty had disappeared. In
the same glance, the hands of a clock hanging on one wall
came into his field of view; and the position of
them printed itself on his memory in a sector of remorseless warning. Two m
inutes had ticked by since he left the dining room,
which
gave him six minutes more at
the outside before the effects of
the dope which had splashed a lurid
semicolon into the purplest
passage of the
official pursuit would be wearing off—even
if no interfering waiter uncovered the deception before that.
Six hazardous minutes in which to squeeze what he
had to
learn out of the brain of that
man of polished marble, and to
select his own riposte… . And then
Simon felt the light hand
of the prince
stroking up inside his arm into his armpit and
slipping back to his elbow just as lightly, and he knew that the
possible hiding-places for jewels on his own
person had been
comprehensively
investigated. Rudolf also had much to learn.
It would be a cake-walk of a race with a whirlwind sprint at
the
finish, but the Saint could find nothing to complain about
in that. He chuckled and sank into an armchair.

“Must you do these things?” he
inquired mildly. “You know,
I’m rather ticklish, and I might
scream.”

The prince settled down and crossed his
legs.

“You must not let me detain you too
long,” he remarked
solicitously. “Your time must be
valuable.”

“Have you anything really interesting to
say?” murmured
the Saint bluntly.

The prince looked at him.

“This is the third time that you have
chosen to meddle in
my affairs, Mr. Templar. I have told you before that
your
persistence
might compel me to think of methods of permanent discouragement Believe me, my
dear friend, it will only
be your own
obstinacy which may cause me to take steps which
I should genuinely regret.”

“Such as—handing over the vendetta to a
couple of overfed policemen? You don’t know how disappointed I am about you,
Rudolf.”

“That was an unfortunate necessity. You
had to be found
without
delay, and the police have facilities which are denied
to ordinary people like ourselves.”