Saint's Getaway (21 page)

“I just thought I might find some crown
jewels,” said the
Saint; and Marcovitch steadied his automatic.

“Did you?”

Simon nodded. His level gaze slid down the
other’s coat and detected a bulge in one pocket that signified as much as he required
to know.

“Yeah. Only you got here first.”
Lower down, he caught a
gleam of reflected light from the floor.
“Excuse me—I think you missed something.”

He took a pace forward stooping as if to pick
up the stone.

Then he hurled himself at the knees of the
nearest man like
the
bolt from a crossbow. Marcovitch fired at the same mo
ment, but the Saint’s luck held. His impetus somersaulted him
clean over the sprawling body of his victim, and
he rolled over like a scalded eel and ducked behind the struggling breastwork.
His
left hand whipped round the man’s waist and fastened on
the man’s gun wrist, holding him in position by the sheer
strength of one arm.

“Sorry about this,” said the Saint

The others paused for a second, and in that breathing space the
Saint got to his feet again, bringing his human shield up
with him in a heave of eruptive effort. He backed
towards the
door, reached it, and
got it open; then the man half broke from
his hold in a flurry of cursing fight, and Simon flung him away
and leapt through the door with a bullet crashing
past his ear.
Patricia Holm was
outside, and the Saint caught her in his arms
and spun her round before she could speak.

“Run for it!”
he rapped.
“This is why angels have wings!”

He thrust her on; and then his eye fell on
the emergency
rescue outfit in its glass-fronted case on the wall
beside him. He
let
go his gun and put his elbow through the glass, snatching
the light axe from its bracket, and ran backwards
with it swinging in his hand. Everything was a matter of split seconds in that
extraordinarily discreet getaway, and
no one knew better than
Simon Templar that only an exhibition of agility
that would
make cats look silly was going to
skin a ninth life out of the
hornets’
nest that had blown up under his feet He had been
labelled for the long ride from the moment he had
entered that
raided brake van: the
urgent menace of it had been flaming
at
him through the atmosphere as plainly as if it had been
chalked up on the wall. And the Saint felt
appropriately self-
effacing.
…
As
the leading gunman came out of the van,
Simon drew back his hand and sent the axe whistling down the
corridor in a long, murderous parabola. The man
let out an
oath and threw up his arms
to save his skull—short of com
mitting suicide, he had no option in the
matter—and that
distraction gave Simon the
few seconds’ start he needed. He
raced up behind the girl and swung her
into the nearest compartment, and its solitary occupant looked up from her
Ethel
M. Dell and displayed a familiar face
freezing into a glare of
indignant horror.

“Must you follow me everywhere?”
she squeaked. “You and
your filthy germs——
”

“Madam, we were just having a little bug
hunt,” said the
Saint soothingly; and then the woman saw the
gun in his hand
and rushed to the communication cord with a shrill
scream.

Simon grinned faintly and glanced past her
out of the win
dow. They were running over a low embankment at the foot
of
which was a thick wood; he couldn’t have arranged it better
if he had
tried—it was the one slice of luck that had come to
him without a string
on it that day.

“Saved us the trouble,” murmured
the Saint philosophically.

He was wedging his automatic at an angle
between the slid
ing door and its frame, so that it pointed slantingly down
the
corridor. The train was slowing down rapidly, and he prayed
that that
whiskered gag would get by for as long as they took
to stop. Also he had
an idea that the alarm given by the frightened lady would push a hairier fly
into the ointment of the ungodly than anything else that could have happened.

He looked round and saw the shadow of
puzzlement on
Patricia’s forehead.

“Has anything gone wrong, lad?” she
asked; and the ques
tion struck him as so comic that he had to laugh.

“Nothing to speak of,” he said.
“It’s only a few rough men
trying to kill us, but we’ve had people try
that before.”

“Then why did you want the train
stopped?”

“Because I want to back Bugle Call for
the Derby, and I’ve
heard no news of totes in heaven. I can’t think when we’ve
been so unpopular. It seems a lot of fuss to make over one
little blue
diamond, but I suppose Rudolf knows best.”

He went over to the other side of the
compartment and
opened the window wide. The train was grinding itself to
a
standstill, and once it came to rest there would be very little
time to
spare. In one corner, the apostle of strength and silence was clutching her
Pekinese and moaning hysterically at inter
vals. Simon ruffled
the dog’s ears, hauled himself up with his
hands on the two
luggage racks, and swung his legs acrobati
cally over the sill.

2

Monty Hayward was a couple of coaches farther
north when
the train stopped.

He had begun to drift thoughtfully southward
a minute or
two
after Patricia Holm left him. The Saint’s instructions to engage someone in
conversation appealed to him. He felt that
a
spot of light-hearted relaxation was just what he needed. And
the orders he had been given seemed to leave him
as free a
hand as he could have
desired. The prospect lifted up his spirits like an exile’s dream of home.

He squeezed past a group of chattering
Italians and came up
beside the girl who was gazing pensively through a window near the
end of the corridor. She moved aside abstractedly to
let him pass, but Monty had other ideas.

“Don’t you know that policemen get their
flat feet from
standing about all day?” he said reproachfully.

The girl looked at him critically for several seconds, and
Monty endured the scrutiny without blinking. There
was a curl
of soft gold escaping from under one side of her rakish
little
hat, and her lips had a sweet curve.
And then she smiled.

“Can you tell me what that station was
that we just went
through?” she asked.

“Ausgang,” said Monty. “I saw
it written up.”

She laughed.

“Idiot! That means ‘Way Out.’ “

“Does it?” said Monty innocently.
“Then I must have been
thinking of some other place.” He
offered his cigarette case. “I
gather that this isn’t your first
visit to these parts.”

She accepted a cigarette and a light with an
entire absence
of self-consciousness, which was one of the most
refreshing and’
at
the same time one of the most complimentary gestures that
he had seen for a long time.

“I ought to know the language,” she said. “My
father was born in Munich—he didn’t become an American citizen until
he was three years old. But still, they say it’s
a young country.”
She had a
frank carelessness of conventional snobbery that
matched her natural grace of manner. “As a matter of fact, I’ve
just finished spending a fortnight with his
family. That was the excuse I made for coming over, so I couldn’t get out of
it”

“My father was a Plymouth
Brother,” said Monty rerniniscently
. “He once
thought of going abroad to convert the
heathen, but Mother
didn’t trust him. Now, if he’d been a
Bavarian, I might have been your
cousin—and that would have
been a quite different story.”

“Why?”

“I should have refused to allow you to
leave us without a
chaperon.”

“Would you?”

“I would. And then I’d have proposed
myself for the job. I’m not sure that it’s too late even now. Could I interest
you
in a thoroughly good watchdog, guaranteed house-trained and
very good
with children?”

She glanced at him mischievously.

“I should want to see your
references.”

“I was four years in my last place,
lady.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Yes, mum. I was supposed to be in for
seven, but there was
a riot, and I climbed over a wall.”

He was confirmed in an early impression that
her laugh was
like a ripple of crystal bells. She had very white
teeth, and eyes
like
amethysts, and he thought that she was far too nice to be
travelling alone.

She turned back her sleeve and consulted a
tiny gold watch.

“Do you think they’ll ever serve
tea?” she said. “I’ve got one of the world’s great thirsts, and
Germany doesn’t care.”

Monty had a saddening sense of anticlimax. He
was starting
to realize the sordid disadvantages of being a
buccaneer. You can take a beauteous damsel’s acquaintance by storm, but you
can’t
offer her a cup of tea. He felt that the twentieth century
was
uncommonly inconsiderate to its outlaws. He tried to pic
ture
Captain Kidd in a similar predicament. “I’d love to buy
you a
glass of milk, my dear, but Grandma’s walking the plank
at five.
…
”

“I’m afraid you’ve beaten me,” he said. “I’m not
allowed to
move from here until Simon gets
back.”

“And what’s Simon doing?”

“Well, he’s trying to find some crown
jewels; and if he gets
shot at I’m supposed to go along and get
shot as well.”

The girl looked at him with a slight frown.
“That one’s a bit too deep for me,” she said.

“It’s much too deep for me,” Monty
confessed. “But I’ve given up worrying about it. I don’t look like a
desperate
character, do I?”

She contemplated him with a renewal of the
detached curiosity with which she had estimated his first advance. Her an
cestry
might have been German, but her quiet self-possession
belonged wholly to
the American tradition. Monty would have
counted the day well
spent if he had been free to take her
under his wing; but his ears were
straining through the con
tinuous clatter of the train for the first
warnings of the violent
and unlawful things that must soon be
happening somewhere
in the south, and he knew that that pleasant interlude
could not last for long. He returned her gaze without embarrass
ment,
wondering what she would say if she knew that he was wanted for murder.

“You look fairly sane,” she said.

“I used to think so myself,” said
Monty amusedly. “It’s only
when I come out in a rash and find myself
biting postmen in
the leg that I have my doubts.”

“Then you might let me share the
joke.”

“My dear, I’d like to share lots of
things with you. But that
one isn’t my own property.”

The full blaze of her unaffected loveliness
would have daz
zled a lesser man.

“Weren’t you ever warned that it’s
dangerous to tease an
inquisitive woman?”

Monty laughed.

“Why not have half my shirt
instead?” he suggested cheer
fully; and then the sudden check of the
train as the brakes
came on literally threw her into his arms.

He restored her gently to her balance, and
found himself abstractedly fingering the butt of the gun in his pocket while
she
apologized. He needed the concrete reminder of that cold,
metallic
contact to fetch him back to the outlook from which he had been trying to
escape—the view of his corner of the
world as a place where murder and
sudden death were com
monplaces, and freedom continued only as the
reward of a
ceaseless vigilance.

“That’s all right,” he said
absently. “You didn’t have to help
yourself to it. If
you’d asked me for it I’d have given it to
you.”