Saint's Getaway (7 page)

The figure ahead was not so stealthy. Simon
could hear the soft rustle and pad of thin shoes hurrying over the ground, and
once he
caught the dry rustling of leaves as the prince scraped past a laurel bush. To
a man with the Saint’s ears, those sounds
were of more value
than all the sun arcs in Hollywood: they told him everything he wanted to know,
without making his
own presence so obvious. Flitting inaudibly behind them,
he
closed in on his quarry until he could actually hear the prince’s
steady
breathing.

A second later, the sudden squeak of a metal
hinge fetched
the Saint up all standing. Immediately in front of him he
could make
out an arched opening in the gloom, and for a moment the prince’s silhouette
was framed in the gap. Then
the hinge squeaked its second protest, and the
silhouette was
gone.

Simon frowned. Laurel bushes he could cope
with, dead
twigs likewise, and similarly any of the other hazards of
night
stalking; but squeaking gates were a notch or two above his form. And the
Saint knew that when once a gate has made up
its mind to squeak it
will surely get its squeak in somehow, even though the hand that shifts it has
a touch like gossamer.

Thoughtfully he stepped back.

Seven feet up, the wall through which the
arch was cut
ended in a flat line of deeper blackness against the dense
ob
scurity of the sky. That seemed to be the only hope; and the Saint went
for it with a quick spring and a supple pull on his
fingers that brought
him to the top of the wall like an athletic
phantom. He drew his
feet up after him without a sound—and
stopped there motionless.

Right underneath him a big limousine was
parked with its lights out and its engine whispering, barely discernible in the
faint luminance which filtered down the alley from an invis
ible
street lamp somewhere in the road at the far end. A man
in some
sort of livery was closing the door, and Simon heard
the prince murmur a
curt order. The chauffeur hurried round
and climbed in behind
the wheel. There was a dull click as
he engaged the gears; and the
headlights cut a wide channel
of radiance out of the darkness of the lane.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the Saint
stepped out into
space and spreadeagled himself silently on the roof.

He was aware that he was doing the maddest of
mad things.
For all he knew, that car might be preparing to hustle to
the
other end of Europe. If it chose to do so, it could easily
travel
two hundred miles before it made its first stop; and every one
of those
miles would have its chance of hurling him off to cer
tain injury and
possible death—apart from the ever present
risk of discovery. And back in the Hotel K
ö
nigshof he had left
Monty and Pat to keep their ends up with a corpse and a prisoner, and
not one clue between them to indicate what he ex
pected them to do.

But they would have to pull their own weights
in the boat,
even
as the Saint was pulling his. Patricia he knew like his own
hand; and Monty Hayward was a veritable tower of
strength. They would find their own solution to the revised problem—
even if that solution consisted of nothing more
desperate than
a policy of masterly inaction.

Meanwhile, fully three quarters of his own
talents were
taken up with the business of maintaining his present
strate
gic position. At the first trial, the roof of the car had seemed
most
conveniently proportioned to enable him to curl his toes
over the
rear corners and his fingers over the front ones,
thereby stabilizing
his equilibrium over a wide base; but
after the first five minutes he
discovered that his position was
unpleasantly reminiscent of the lunch hour in
a mediaeval
torture chamber. If he had been able to talk, he would
have
aired his heartfelt sympathy with the venerable sportsmen who allowed
their heights to be increased on the six-inches-while-
you-wait machine, while the jailers went
round the corner to
get gay with a butt of
mulled sack. The car dodged and bucked
round
every available corner, heading eastwards out of the
town onto the Salzburg road; and at every corner
he had to
exert all his strength to
avoid being flung into the scenery like a pea off a gyroscope. Even when they
were clear of the town he was no better off; for the Inn Valley road, for its
own mys
terious reasons, switches
over a series of bridges from one side
of
the river to the other at every conceivable opportunity and
a few others which only an engineering genius
could have invented. Moreover, it is covered to a depth of three inches with
a layer of fine white dust; and as the car
increased its speed
the Saint found
himself enveloped in a whirling cloud of pul
verized rock which invaded his nostrils and turned the lining of his
throat into a lime kiln—a form of frightfulness which
the mediaeval connoisseurs had omitted to include
in their syl
labus of entertainment.
The Saint clung on like a limpet,
breathing
through his ears, and dreaming wistfully of feather
beds and beer.

After a while he began to get adjusted to the peculiar re
quirements of his position—for what that was
worth. At least,
he felt
sufficiently secure to try and take a peek at what there
was to be seen
in the
de luxe
quarters of the vehicle. Locating
a merciful straight stretch of road in front of them, he let go
one
hand and squirmed himself gingerly round to shoot one
eyes through the miniature skylight under his belt buckle.

At the four corners of the rear compartment,
clusters of
tiny
frosted bulbs illuminated the interior. By their light Si
mon could see the prince reclining in the
sybaritic upholstery
with the
portable safe balanced on his knee. He was idly
twiddling the wheels of the combination, and a tranquil smile
was gliding over his face. Presently he put the
strong-box down
on the cushions beside him and rested his chin on his
hand,
wrapped in inscrutable contemplation.

The Saint grabbed for a hold and flattened
himself out again in time to take the next corner. And he also meditated.

The view he had had of the tableau under his
tummy was
definitely encouraging. Pondering it between the racking
strains on
his muscles, he elaborated it into a direct and diag
nostic confirmation
of his theory. The facts as he knew them
so far had to link up
somehow, and the Saint felt that he could
do the linking. That
was why he was suffering his present
martyrdom.

He tacked the dues concisely together in his
mind.

“Emilio was tailing Stanislaus to report
when he made the
home base. When I collared Stanislaus, Emilio didn’t try
to
rescue him; he knifed him instead. After which, Rudolf tools
and lifts
the sardine can. Simple.”

The big car sped on; and time became nothing
but a mean
ingless
succession of aches. They passed through a jolly-sound
ing place called Pill, swung right at Schwaz, and began to
climb into the mountains. Shortly afterwards, the
so-called
“first-class”
road petered out, and they were jolting over a kind
of glorified mule track which boxed the compass
along the
brink of a contorted
precipice. The chauffeur, whose nervous
system must have been nothing more than an elementary ap
paratus rigged up from a few assorted icicles and
bits of string,
kept his foot hard
down on the accelerator and took the hair
pin corners on two wheels; and after the first mile of it the
Saint buried his face in his sleeve and lost
interest in the route.
Every few
minutes he felt the car heel drunkenly over to one
side or the other, while the tires skidded horribly
over the
loose, treacherous surface;
and the Saint felt the flesh crawling
on
the back of his neck and wondered if any art of surgery
would ever induce his bones to settle back into
their tortured
sockets.

Eventually, with a terrific bump which the
Saint at first as
sumed to be the inevitable end, the car crabbed onto a com
paratively level driveway and
began to slow down.

Simon raised his head with the feelings of a
drowning man
who finds himself unexpectedly coming up for the fourth
time,
and endeavoured to absorb the salient features of the land
scape.

Straight in front of him he could see a
pitch-black pile rear
ing up its serrated battlements out of the
shrouded dark. The
headlamps of the car splashed a wide oval of light over
the
bleak stone entrance flanked by semicircular bastions, and
picked
out the gaunt figure of the janitor, who was at that mo
ment
hurrying to open the huge wrought-iron gates. To left
and right of the archway the forbidding
walls of the castle stretched sheer and unbroken to the squat round towers at
the
corners fifty yards away.

The car moved slowly forward again, and the Saint pulled
himself cautiously up onto his toes and
fingertips. The gatekeeper was temporarily blinded by the headlights; and
Simon
knew that that was his only chance. Once the car had passed within
the walls, the odds on his being spotted would leap up
to twenty-five to one; and having travelled so far, he had no
urge to gamble his hopes of success on any bet
like that.

The gateway was the vulnerable point in the
fortifications,
with a bare yard of masonry rising over it. As the car
passed
underneath, Simon set his teeth, gathered his cracking muscles,
and
jumped. He caught the top of the stonework, and wriggled
over with
an effort that seemed to split his sinews.

He found himself on a sort of narrow balcony
that spanned
the
archway and disappeared into the turrets on each side. In the courtyard below
him he could see the car swinging round
to
pull up beside a massive door over which a hanging lantern
swayed in the
slight breeze. The car stopped, and the prince
stepped quickly out; as he did so, the door was flung open, and a broad
beam of light cast the grotesquely elongated shadow of
a footman down
the steps. The prince stepped inside, pulling
off
his gloves; and the door dosed.

Simon’s eye roved thoughtfully up the walls
above the door.
Higher up he could see a narrow streak of light sneaking
through a
gap in the curtains of a window: while he watched,
the window next to it
suddenly appeared in a yellow square
of radiance.

“Which seems to be our next stop,”
opined the Saint.

He moved along to the turret on his left, and found a flight
of spiral stone stairs running upwards and
downwards from
the minute landing
where he stood. After a second’s cogitation,
he decided on the upward
flight, and emerged onto a broader
promenade
which ran round the entire perimeter of the
walls.

Simon kissed his hand to the unknown
architect of that invaluable veranda, and hustled round it as quickly as he
dared.
A matter of three minutes brought him to a point which he
judged to
be vertically over the lighted windows; leaning
dizzily over the
battlements, he was able to make out a dimly
illuminated sill. And
right under his hands he could feel the
thick, gnarled
tendrils of a growth of ivy that must have been
digging itself in since the days of
Charlemagne.

With the slow beginnings of a Saintly smile
touching his
lips, Simon flexed his arms, took a firm grip on the
nearest
tentacles,
and swung his legs over the low balustrade.

And it was at that moment that he heard the
scream.

It was the most dreadful shriek that he had
ever heard. Shrill,
quavering, and heart-sickening, it pealed out from beneath
him and went wailing round the empty courtyard in horrible
strident
agony. It was a scream that gurgled out of a retch
ing throat that had
lost all control—the shuddering brute cry
of a man crucified
beyond the endurance of human flesh and blood. It tingled up into the Saint’s
scalp like a stream of elec
tric needles and numbed his belly with a
frozen nausea.