Saint's Getaway (5 page)

He lighted a cigarette and paced the room
thoughtfully for
a few moments. On one of his rounds he stopped to open
the
communicating door wide, and stood there listening for a
second.
Then he went on.

“One or two things are getting
clearer,” he said. “As I see it,
the key to the whole
shemozzle is inside that there sardine can.
The warriors who
tried to heave Stanislaus into the river
wanted it, and it’s
also one of the three possible reasons for the
present litter of dead
bodies. Stanislaus was bumped, either
(a)
because he
had the can,
(b)
because he might have made
a noise,
(c)
because
he might have squealed—or for a combina
tion of all three
reasons. The man who knifed him tried to grab
the contents of the
attach
é
case and was flummoxed by the
sardine can within. Not having
with him any means of open
ing it or
separating it from Stanislaus, he returned rapidly to
the tall timber. And one detail you can shunt
right out of your minds is any idea that the contents of the said can are
respect
able enough to be mentioned
in law-abiding circles anywhere.”

“Bank messengers have been known to carry bags chained
to their wrists,” Monty advanced
temperately.

“Yeah.” Simon was withering.
“At half-past two in the morn
ing, the streets are stiff with ‘em.
Diplomatic messengers have
the same habits. They’re recruited from the runts of the earth;
and one of their qualifications is to be so
nitwitted they don’t
know a friend
when they see one. When they’re attacked by
howling mobs of hoodlums, they never let out a single cry for
help—they flop about in the thickest part of the
uproar and
never try to get saved.
Stanislaus must have been an ambas
sador!”

Monty nodded composedly.

“I know what you mean,” he said.
“He must have been a
crook.”

The Saint laughed and turned back to the bed.
After one
appraising scrutiny of the link on which he had placed his
drop
of acid, he twisted the chain round his hand and broke it like
a piece of string.

With the steel box weighing freely in his
hand, he lounged
against a chest of drawers; and once again he looked
across at
Monty Hayward with that mocking half smile on his lips.

“You hit the mark in once, old lad,”
he said softly. “Stan
islaus was a crook. And who bumped him
off?”

Monty deliberated.

“Well—presumably it was one of the birds
we threw into the
river.
A rival gang.”

Simon shook his head.

“If it was, he dried himself quickly
enough. There isn’t one
damp spot on the carpet or the bed, except for
Stanislaus’s
gore. No—we can rule that out. It was a rival gang, all
right, but a bunch that we haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting.
Their representative
was obviously on the set the whole time, unbeknownst, only the Water Babies
forestalled him. But who
were the Water Babies?”

“Do you know?”

“Yes,” said the Saint quietly.
“I think I know.”

Mechanically Patricia Holm took a cigarette
from her case
and lighted it. She, who knew the Saint better than anyone
else living, saw clearly through the deceiving quietness of his
voice—straight
through to the glinting undercarry of irrepres
sible mirth that
weaved beneath. She caught his eye and read
his secret in it before he spoke.

“They were policemen,” said the
Saint.

The words flicked through the room like a
wisk of raptur
ous lightning, leaving the air prickling with suspense.
Monty froze up as though his eardrums had been stunned.

“What?” he demanded. “Do you
mean——
”

“I do.” The Saint was laughing—a
wild billow of helpless
jubilation that smashed the suspense like
dynamite. He flung
out his arms shakily. “That’s just it, boys and
girls—I do! I
mean no more and nothing less. Oh, friends, Romans,
country
men—roll up and sign along the dotted line: the goods have
been
delivered C. O. D.!”

“But are you sure?”

Simon slammed the strong-box on the chest of
drawers.

“What else could they have been?
Stanislaus never shouted
for help because he knew he wouldn’t get it.
I thought that
was eccentric right from the start, but you can’t hold up
a first-
class rough-house while you chew the cud over its eccentric
features.
And then, when Stanislaus gave me the air, I knew I
was right. Don’t you
remember what he said?
‘Ich will gar
nichts sagen’
—the
conversational gambit of every arrested crook since the beginning of time,
literally translated: ‘I’m
saying nothing.’ But what a mouthful that
was!”

Monty Hayward blinked.

“Are you telling me,” he said,
“that all the time I’ve been
risking my neck to save some anaemic
little squirt from being
beaten up ,by three hairy toughs, and then
cheerfully heaving
the three toughs into the river—I’ve actually been saving
a
nasty little crook from being arrested, and helping you to mur
der three respectable
detectives?”

“Monty, old turbot, you have so.”
Once more the Saint bowed weakly before the storm. “Oh, sacred thousand
Camemberts—stand
by and fill your ears with this! … And
you started it! You
lugged me into the regatta. You led these
timid feet into the
mire of sin. And here we are, with the po
lice after us, and
Stanislaus’s pals after us, and the birds who bumped Stanislaus off after us,
and a genuine corpse on the
buffet, and an unopenable can of unclaimed
boodle on the
how’s-your-father—and
I was trying to be good!”

Monty put down his glass and rose
phlegmatically. He was
a man in whom the Saint had never in his life
seen any signs of
serious flustennent, but just then he seemed as dose to the
verge of demonstration as he was ever likely to be.

“I never aspired to be an outlaw myself,
if it comes to that,”
he said. “Simon, I simply loathe your
sense of humour.”

The Saint shrugged his shoulders. He was
unrepentant.
And already his brain was leaping ahead into a whirlwind
of
surmise and leaving that involuntary explosion of rejoicing
far behind
it.

He had summarized for Monty everything that
he knew or
guessed himself—in a small nutshell. He had divined the
situa
tion right from the overture, had been irrevocably confirmed
in his
suspicion in the first act, and had turned his deductions
over and
over in his mind during the interval until they had
taken to themselves
the coherence of concrete knowledge. And in his last sentence he had epitomized
the facts with a staccato
conciseness that lammed them together like a
herd of chort
ling
toads.

They failed lamentably to depress him. Never
again would
he mourn over his lost virtue. What had to be would be. He
had angled for adventure, and it had been handed to him
abundantly.
Admittedly the violent decease of Stanislaus com
plicated matters to
no small extent, but that only piled on
proof that here was
the authentic article as advertised. Who
ever the gangs were
that he was up against, they had already
provided prompt and
efficient evidence that they were worthy
of his steel. His
heart warmed towards them. His toes yearned after their posteriors. They were
his boy friends.

His brain went racing on towards the next
move. The other
two were watching him expectantly, and for their benefit
he continued with his thoughts aloud.

“If anybody is wanting to get out,”
he said, “this is the time
to go. The birds who bumped off Stanislaus are
going to have lots more to say before they’re through, and it’s only a question
of hours before they say it. The guy who did the bumping has
gone home
to report, and the only thing we don’t know is how
long they’ll take to
get organized for the come-back. Even
now——
”

He broke off and stood listening.

In the silence, the gentle drumming on the
outer door of
the suite, which had commenced as an almost inaudible vi
bration,
rose slowly through a gradual crescendo until they
could all hear it
quite distinctly; and the Saint’s brows levelled
over his eyes in a
dark line. Yet he rounded off his speech without a tremor of expression.

“Even now,” said the Saint
unemotionally, “it may be too
late.”

Monty spoke.

“The police—or Stanislaus’s pals—or the
knife experts?”

Simon smiled.

“We shall soon know,” he murmured.

There was a gun gleaming in his hand—a wicked
little snub-
nosed Webley automatic that fitted snugly and
inconspicuously
into the palm. He slipped back the jacket and replaced it
in
his pocket, keeping his hand there, and crossed the room with his swift,
swinging stride. And as he reached the door, the
knocking stopped.

The Saint halted also, with the furrows
deepening in his
forehead. Not once since it began had that knocking
possessed the timbre which might have been expected from it—either of
peremptory
summons or stealthy importunity. It had been
more like a long
tattoo artistically performed for its own sake,
with a sort of
patient persistence that lent an eerie quality to its abrupt stoppage. And the
Saint was still circling warily round the puzzle when the solution was launched
at him with
a smooth purposefulness that made his heart skip one beat.

“Please do nothing rash,” said a
mellifluous voice in perfect
English.

The Saint spun round.

In the communicating doorway of the sitting
room stood a
slim and elegant man in evening dress, unarmed except for
the
gold-mounted ebony cane held lightly in his white-gloved
fingers.
For three ticked seconds the Saint stared at him in
dizzy incredulity; and
then, to Monty Hayward’s amazement,
he sagged limply against the wall and
began to laugh.

“By the great hammer toe of the holy
prophet Hezekiah,”
said the Saint ecstatically—“the Crown Prince Rudolf !”

2

The prince stroked his silky figment of
moustache, and be
hind his hand the corners of his mouth twitched into the
shadow of
a smile.

“My dear young friend, this is a most
unexpected pleasure!
When you were described to me, I could
scarcely believe that
our acquaintance was to be renewed.”

Simon Templar looked at him through a sort of
haze.

His memory went careering back over two
years—back to
the tense days of battle, murder, and sudden death, when
that
slight, fastidious figure had juggled the fate of Europe in his
delicate hands, and the
monstrous evil presence of Rayt Marius,
the
war maker, had loomed horribly across an unsuspecting
world; when the Saint and his two friends had
fought their
lone forlorn fight for
peace, and Norman Kent laid down his life for many people. And then again to
their second encoun
ter, three months
afterwards, when the hydra had raised its
head again in a new guise, and Norman Kent had been remembered… .
Everything came back to him with a startling
and blinding vividness, summed up and crystallized in the
superhuman repose of that slim, dominating
figure—the man
of steel and velvet, as
the Saint would always picture him, the
stormy petrel of the Balkans, the outlaw of Europe, the man who in his
own strange way was the most fanatical patriot of
the age; marvellously groomed, sleek as a
sword-blade, smil
ing.
…

With a conscious effort the Saint pulled
himself together.
Out of that maelstrom of reminiscence, one thing stood
out
a couple of miles. If Prince Rudolf was participating in the
spree, the
soup into which he had dipped his spoon was liable
to contain so little
poppycock that the taste would be almost imperceptible. Somewhere in the
environs of Innsbruck big medicine was being brewed; the theory of ordinary
boodle in
some shape or form, which the Saint had automatically ac
cepted as
the explanation of that natty little strong-box, was
wafted away to
inglorious annihilation. And somewhere behind that smiling mask of polished
ice were locked away the
key threads of the intrigue.