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Authors: Leslie Charteris

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BOOK: Saint's Getaway
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“I thought he was a crook,” said
Monty rationally.

“I know! That’s the mistake we’ve all
been making. And yet
you can’t say you ever heard me speak of
Rudolf as a crook.
He never had to be. It wasn’t so long ago when Rudolf
could
have bought us both up every day for a week and never
missed it.
It wasn’t so long ago when Rudolf and Rayt Marius
were playing for
bigger chips than a few coloured stones. It
was war in those days,
Monty—death rays and Secret Service
men, spies and Bolsheviks and
assassinations—all the fun of
the fair. Naturally there was money in it, but
that was all com
ing to Rayt Marius. Marius was a crook, even if he was
dealing
in millions. But Rudolf was something that seems much stranger in these
days. Something a damned sight more dangerous.”

“And what’s that?”

“A patriot,” said the Saint.

Patricia kicked at her stone again, and It
tumbled out of
reach. She hardly noticed it.

“Then when we found we were up against
Rudolf
again——

“We ought to have been wide awake. And we
weren’t.
We’ve been fast asleep I We’ve watched Rudolf moving
heaven
and earth to get his hands on those jewels—killing and tortur
ing for
them—even coming down to offering me a partnership
while his men had
orders to shoot us on sight—and we took it
all as part of the
game. We’ve been on the spot ever since Stan
islaus went home with
us. Up in that brake van—I’ve never
seen anything so flat-and-be-damned in
my life! Marcovitch
was primed to put me out of the way from the beginning. It
was written all over his face. And after that he’d ‘ve shot up
anyone else
who butted in for a witness, and taken you and
Monty for a
dessert—made a clean sweep of it, and shovelled
the whole mortuary
out onto the line.” The Saint’s voice was tense and vital with his
excitement. “I thought of it once myself
, right in the first
act; but since then there doesn’t seem
to have been much
spare time. When Rudolf walked into our
rooms at the K
ö
nigshof, I was wondering what new devilment
we’d
stumbled across. I was telling myself that there was one
thing we
weren’t going to find in this adventure—and that
was ordinary boodle
in any shape or form. And then, just be
cause a quarter of a
million pounds’ worth of crystallized min
erals fell out of that
sardine tin, I went soft through the skull.
I forgot everything I
ever knew.”

“Do you know any more now?” asked
Monty skeptically.
Simon looked at him straightly.

“I know one thing more, which I was
going to tell you,” he
answered. “Josef Krauss gave me the hint
before he died. He
said: ‘Take great care of the blue diamond. It is really
price
less.’ And just for the last few minutes, Monty, I’ve been think
ing that
when we know what he meant by that we shall
know why Rudolf has
made up his mind that you and I are
too dangerous to live.”

 

 

IX.
   
HOW
 
SIMON HAD AN INSPIRATION,
 
AND

TRESPASSED
 
IN
 
THE
 
GARDEN
 
OF
 
EDEN

 

 

MONTY HAYWARD dug out his tobacco pouch and investi
gated, the
contents composedly. His deliberately practical in
telligence refused to
be stampeded into any Saintly flights of
fancy.

“If it’s any use to you,” he said,
“I should suggest that Josef was trying to be helpful. Perhaps he didn’t
know you were a
connoisseur
of blue diamonds.”

“Perhaps,” said the Saint.

He came to his feet with the lithe swiftness
of an animal,
settling his belt with one hand and sweeping back the
other
over his smooth hair. The cold winds of incredulity and com
mon sense
flowed past his head like summer zephyrs. He had
his inspiration. The
flame of unquenchable optimism in his
eyes was electric, an irresistible resurgence of the old
Saintly
exaltation that would always find a
new power and hope in
the darkest
thunders of defeat. He laughed. The stillness had fallen from him like a cloak—fallen
away as if it had never
existed. He
didn’t care.

“Let’s be moving,” he said; and
Monty Hayward stowed his
pipe away again with a sigh.

“Where do you think we could move to?” he asked.

And once again it seemed to Patricia Holm
that the breath
of Saintly laughter in the air was like the sound of
distant trumpets rallying a forlorn venture on the last frontiers of
outlawry.

“We can move out of here. It won’t be
fifteen minutes after
that train gets into Treuchtlingen before
there’ll be a cordon
of gendarmerie packing around this
neighbourhood closer
than fat women round a remnant counter. And
I’ve got a
date with Marcovitch that they mightn’t want me to
keep.”

He flicked the automatic adroitly out of
Monty’s pocket and
dropped it into his own; and then a blur of colour moved
in
the borders of his vision, and his glance shot suddenly across
Monty’s shoulder.

“Holy smoke!” said the Saint.
“What’s this?”

Monty turned round.

It may be chronicled as a matter of solemn
historical fact
that the second in which he saw what had provoked the
Saint’s
awed ejaculation was one of the most pregnant moments of his life. It was
a back-hander from the gods which zoomed clean under his guard and knocked the
power of protest out
of him. To a man who had laboured so long and
steadfastly
to uphold the principles of a righteous and sober life in
the
face of unlimited discouragement, it was the unkindest cut
of all.

He stood and stared at the approaching nucleus
of his Wa
terloo with all the emotions of a temperance agitator who
discovers that some practical joker has replenished with neat gin
the glass
of water from which he has just gulped an ostenta
tious draught of
strength for his concluding peroration. He
felt that Providence
had gone out of its way to plant a banana skin directly under his inoffensive
heel. If his guardian angel
had bobbed up smirking at that moment with any
chatty re
marks about the. weather, Monty would unhesitatingly have
socked him under the jaw. And yet the slim girl who was walk
ing towards
them across the clearing seemed brazenly un
aware that she was
making Nemesis look like a decrepit washerwoman going berserk on a couple of
small ports. She was
actually smiling at him; and the unblushing
impudence of her
put the finishing touch to Monty Hayward’s d
é
b
â
cle.

“It’s—it’s someone I met on the
train,” he said faintly, and knew that Patricia Holm and the Saint were
leaning on each
other’s shoulders in a convulsion of Homeric mirth.

It was Monty’s only consolation that his
Waterloo could
scarcely have overtaken him in a more attractive guise.
The
awful glare with which he regarded her arrival almost
sprained
the muscles of his conscience, but it disconcerted her
even less than the
deplorable exhibition that was going on be
hind him.

“Hullo, Mr. Bandit,” she said
calmly.

The Saint freed himself unsteadily from
Patricia’s embrace.
He staggered up alongside the stricken prophet.

“Shall we have her money or her
life?” he crooned. “Or
aren’t we going to be introduced?”

“I think that would be a good idea,”
said the girl; and Monty
called up all his battered reserves of self-control.

He glanced truculently around him.

“I’m Monty Hayward,” he said.
“This is Patricia Holm;
and that nasty mess is Simon Templar. You can
take it that
they’re both very pleased to meet you. Now, are we allowed
to know who you are?”

“I’m Nina Walden.” The girl’s
introspective survey con
sidered Simon interestedly. “Aren’t you
the Saint?”

Simon bowed.

“Lady, you must move in distinguished circles.”

“I do. I’m on the crime staff of the
Evening
Gazette
—New Yo
rk—and there’s nothing more distinguished than that out
side a
jail. I thought I recognized your name.”

She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag,
placed one
in her mouth, and raised her eyebrows impersonally for a
light. The
Saint supplied it.

“And did you get left behind in the
excitement?” he mur
mured.

“I arranged to be left. Your friend told
me there was a
story coming—he didn’t mean to give away any secrets, but
he
said one word too many when the train stopped. And then when he jumped
out and left me floating, I just couldn’t re
sist it. It was like
having a murder committed on your own
doorstep. Everyone was hanging out on
this side of the track,
so I stepped out on the other side while they
were busy and
lay low under the embankment. I walked over as soon as
the
train pulled out, but I certainly thought I should have to
chase you a long way. It was
nice of you to wait for me.” She
smiled
at him shamelessly, without a quiver of those down
right eyes.
“Gee—I knew I was going to get a story, but I never
guessed it’d be anything like this!”

The Saint brought his lighter slowly back to
his pocket. On
his left, Monty Hayward was stomaching that final
pulverizing
wallop of revelation with a look of pained reproach on his
face which was far more eloquent than any flow of speech; on
his right,
Patricia Holm was standing a little aloof, with her
hands tucked into the
slack of that swashbuckling belt of hers,
silently enjoying the
humorous flavour of the scene; but the
Saint had flashed on
far beyond those things. A wave of the
inspired opportunism
which could never let any situation be
come static under the
ceaseless play of his imagination had
lifted him up to a new level of
audacity that the others had yet
to reach. The downfall of Monty Hayward was
complete: so be
it: the Saint saw no need to ask for further details—he
had
thrust back that supreme moment into the index of episodes
which might
be chortled over in later years, and he was work
ing on to the object
which was just then so much more ur
gently important Nina Walden was
there—and the Saint liked
her nerve.

“So you’re a dyed-in-the-wool
reporter?” he drawled; and
the girl nodded bewitchingly.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve got all your
papers—everything you need to
guarantee you as many facilities as a foreign
journalist can
corner in this country?”

“I think so.”

“And you want the biggest story of your
life—a front-page
three-column splash with banner lines and black
type?”

“I’m hoping to get it.”

The Saint gave her smile for smile. And the
Saintly smile
was impetuous with a mercurial resolve that paralleled
the
swaggering alignment of his shoulders.

“Nina, the story’s yours. I’ve always
wanted to make one
newspaper get its facts about me right before I die. But
the
story isn’t quite finished yet, and it never will be if you’re in too
much of a hurry for it. We were just pushing on to
finish it—and we’ve
wasted enough time already. Come on with us—leave the interviews till
afterwards—and I’ll give
you the scoop of the year. I don’t know what
it is, but I know it’ll be a scoop. Wipe all your moral scruples off the map—
help me as much as I’ll help you—and it’s a monopoly. Would
you like it?”

The girl picked a loose flake of tobacco from
the edge of
her red mouth.

BOOK: Saint's Getaway
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