Saint's Getaway (18 page)

Her accent would have carved petrified
marrow-bones. It
was
actually one of the detectives who volunteered to inter
pret.

“In Mainz—exchange trains.”

“Bitte, die Fahrkarten,”
said the
inspector stolidly.

Monty swallowed, and delved in his pocket
for the reserva
tions.

They were passed through without a question.
Monty could
hardly
believe that it had been so simple. He stood by and
watched the amused porter stowing their bags away in the
compartment, tipped him extravagantly, and
subsided weakly
into a corner. He
mopped his perspiring forehead and looked
at Patricia with the vague embryo of a grin.

“Do you mean to tell me this is a
sample of your everyday
life?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” said the girl carelessly. “Somtimes it’s
very dull.
You just happen to have dropped
into one of the high spots.”

“It must be an acquired taste.”

Patricia laughed, and passed him her
cigarette case.

“You’re having the time of your life,
really, if you’d only
admit it. It’s a shame about you, Monty—you’re wasted in an
office. Simon would give you a partnership for
the asking. Why don’t you stay in with us?”

“I think I am staying in with you,” said Monty. “We
shall
probably go on staying together—in
the same clink. Still, I’m
always
ready to listen to any proposals you have to make.” He
struck a match and held it out for her. “Are
you included in
the goodwill of the
business?”

She smiled.

“I might let you hold my hand
sometimes.”

“And I suppose as a special treat I
could kiss your toes when I’d murdered someone you didn’t approve of.”

“Maybe you might even do that.”

“Well,” said Monty definitely,
“I don’t think that’s nearly
good enough. You’ll have to think of
something much more
substantial if you want me to be tempted.”

The girl’s blue eyes bantered him.

“Aren’t you a bit mercenary?”

“No. It’s the Saint’s fault for leaving
us alone together so
often. I assure you, Patricia, I’m not to be trusted for a min
ute.”

“We’ll ask Simon about it,” said
the girl wickedly, and stood
up.

She went over to the window and glanced up
and down the
platform. Her watch showed less than a minute to the time
they were scheduled to start:
already the crowd was melting
into its
compartments, doors were being slammed, and the late
arrivals were scurrying about to find their seats.
… Behind
her, a benevolent old
clergyman with a pink face and white
side-whiskers
stopped in the doorway and peered round be
nignly: Monty leered at him hideously, and he departed… .
An official came in and checked their tickets
without paying
them the least
attention… .

Patricia was tapping one sensibly rounded
brogue on the
low heel of the other. She turned and spoke over her shoul
der:

“Any idea what can have kept him?”

“I could think of several,” said Monty, with a
callousness
which scarcely attempted to ring
true. “The silly mutt
ought to
have got away with us instead of hanging around talk
ing to Rudolf. Personally I’d rather sit down and
talk to a
rattlesnake.”

“He had to find out what game Rudolf was
playing,” said
the girl shortly; and at that moment a shadow fell across
them
and they both
turned round.

Simon Templar stood before them—the Saint
himself, with
one long arm reaching to the luggage rack and his feet
braced
against the preliminary jolting of the train, gazing down at
them with
a wide, reckless grin. Even so it was a second or two
before they
recognized him. A white straw hat was tilted onto the back of his head, and a
monocle in his right eye completed
the amazing work of wiping every
fragment of character from
his face and reducing the features to
amiable vacuity. A large
carnation burgeoned in his buttonhole, and his tie was pulled into
a tight knot and sprung foppishly forward from his neck.
Patricia had actually seen him at the far end of
the platform
and dismissed him
without further thought

“Hail, Columbia,” said the Saint

Monty Hayward recovered magnificently from
his surprise.

“Go away,” he said. “I thought
we’d got rid of you. We
were just getting along splendidly.”

The Saint stared at him rudely.

“Hullo,” he said. “What’s
happened to your little soup
strainer? I always told you something would happen if you
didn’t keep moth balls in it.”

“It was removed by special
request,” said Monty, with some
dignity. “Pat told me it
tickled.”

“But what have you been doing?”
asked the girl breathlessly.

The Saint laughed and kissed her. He chucked
his straw hat
up
on the rack, loosened his tie, put the monocle away in his
pocket, removed the flower from his coat and
presented it ex
quisitely to Monty,
and flung himself loosely into a corner
seat, long-limbed and piratical and unchangeably disturbing
—taking Patricia’s cigarette from her lips and
inhaling from it
between merry lips.

“I’ve been keeping the ball rolling and
adding another
felony to our charge sheet Rudolf knows that the boodle
is
now in the post—he’d done a few calories of hot thinking and
spooned the
confirmation out of the head porter. I didn’t dis
pute it. Then he
offered to join forces and halve the kitty—told
me we hadn’t a
hailstone’s break in hell of making the grade alone. Well, the time was getting
on, and I’d got to shake him
off somehow. He told me his car was outside
and it was mine
if I cared to go in cahoots with him, so I told him quite
truth
fully I should love to borrow it. I think he must have misunder
stood me,
somehow, because we went out together, and he was
quite shocked when I
simply stepped in and drove away. I ran
around a couple of
blocks into a quiet street behind the station, and bailed out when no one was
looking. Then I went
through a shop and bought that lid, and an
old woman sold
me the veg for two marks because she said I’d a lucky
face.
And–do you
know, Monty?—I believe I have!”

Monty nodded.

“You’ll need it,” he said
decisively. “If Rudolf catches you
again I should think
he’ll roast you over a slow fire.”

“He’s likely to try it,” said the
Saint lightly. “But d’you know
what it was worth? … My villains,
think of the situation I
Right now we’ve got Rudolf—got him as he’s
never been got in
his life before. He knows the boodle hasn’t gone out of
Germany—I couldn’t have risked it, because it might have been
opened by
the Customs. His one hope is to trail me and watch me collect my mail.
And
the worst thing that could possibly
happen to him would be
to get us into more trouble with the
police!
Whatever
we said to his proposition, he was doomed to
move heaven and earth
to keep the paws of the police from
our coat collars, because once we were
in jug the boodle’d be lost forever. He’s got to take everything we give him.
We can shoot up his staff—pinch his cars—pour plates of soup down
his
dicky—and he’s got to open his face from ear to ear and tell the world how he
loves a good joke!” Simon rolled over
on one elbow and
thumped Monty in the stomach. “Boys and
girls—do you like
it?”

The other two sorted his meaning gradually
out of that jubi
lant cataract of words.They analyzed and absorbed it while
he
laughed at them; and then, before they could marshal their
thoughts
for a reply, he was raiding and scattering them again
with a fresh twist of mountebank’s magic.

“You two were followed to the station.
Rudolf’s pals were
snooping round the hotel, even if they thought it was
safer to
stop
outside. You can take it that a guy who could deduce the
whole idea of shooting boodle into the post office
would have
his own notions about fire escapes. That little runt we laid
out
in the K
ö
nigshof
last night is on the train, and I’ll bet he trod
in on your heels. The
one thing I’m wondering is whether he
had
time to get a message back before we pulled out” Simon
was radiant. “And now try some more. Have
you heard
the new scream about the
bishop?”

“Bishop?” repeated Monty feebly.

“Yep. And for once there’s no actress in
it——
”

He broke off as a large-bosomed female
burdened with two
travelling rugs, a Pekinese, and the words of Ethel M.
Dell threaded herself through the door and deposited herself in the vacant
corner. The Saint glared at Monty and waved his arms
wildly in the air. He raved on as if he
had not noticed the in
trusion.

“… and you
would
be locked up
if I had my way. You
ought to have gone to the hospital. I should
think if the au
thorities knew you were tearing around like this with a
dose of scarlet fever they’d clap you straight into an asylum. And what
about me?
Did I tell you I wanted to catch all your
diseases——
”

A muffled yelp wheezed out of the strong,
silent corner, and the Saint started round in time to see a black bombazine
rump undulating agitatedly out of view. Simon settled himself back and grinned
again.

“Bishop?” Monty encored hazily. The pace was a bit rapid
for him.

“Or something like it. But you must
have seen him. Bloke
with a face like a prawn and white fur round
his ears. Damn
it,
he was rubbering in here a few minutes back! I was dodg
ing him in and out of lavatories all down the train, which is
why I didn’t join you before—him and Rudolf’s
five feet of
stickphast. Well, I can
tell you where I last saw Prawn-face. He
was lashed to a chair in the Crown Prince’s
schloss
with that
hellish screw tightening into his skull—being
invited to open
his strong-box and
disclose the sparklers. That parson is Comrade Krauss, the bird who first
lifted that packet of jewels and began the stampede!”

Patricia recaptured the remains of her
cigarette.

“One minute, boy… . No—he couldn’t
have recognized Monty
and me. He’s never been near us in his life.
And you dodg
ed him… .
But how did he get here?”

“Made his getaway in the confusion, as I
expected he would. And if any man’s got a right to be thirsting for Rudolf’s
blood,
he has. Why he should be on this particular
schnellzug
is still

more than we know—unless maybe he overshot
the mark think
ing we’d got farther ahead than we have. We shall know
soon
enough. If
this journey is peaceful I shall have lived in vain.”

The prospect appeared to please him. Nothing
was more
certain
than that he was in the one element for which he had
been born: the delight of it danced in those rakehell blue eyes——
the eyes of a king in his own kingdom.

“What do we do?” asked Patricia.

She asked it from her own corner, with her hands tucked in
the broad leather belt of her tweed costume. It
was a swashbuckler’s belt with a great silver buckle, an outrageous belt, a
belt that no lady would have dreamed of wearing;
and
she looked like a scapegrace Diana.
She asked her question
with long, slim
legs stretched out and her fair head tilted
rather lazily back on the cushions, with a hint of the same
laziness in her voice—perhaps the most obvious
thing she could
have said, but it made Monty Hayward fill his eyes with
her,
belt and all. And the Saint pulled her
hair.

“What do we do, lass?” he
challenged. “Well, what’s wrong
with a little tour of inspection? I could just do with a
glimpse
of the ungodly gnashing their teeth
to give me an appetite for lunch.”