The Saint's Getaway
Leslie Charteris
By Leslie Charteris
FICTION PUBLISHING COMPANY • NEW YORK
Copyright 1932, 1933 by Leslie Charteris. Published by arrangement
with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
This story is virtually the third volume of a trilogy begun by The Saint Closes the Case and The Avenging Saint. Although it was written a few years after them—with, in fact, four or five other books in between—it was still first published as far back as 1933. I was a lot busier in those days.
In it, the Saint concludes his personal feud with Prince Rudolf, his most interesting opponent in the first two rounds. His other arch enemy, Rayt Marius, does not appear in this one, and actually is only heard of again, post humously, in The Saint in London. As I have had to explain in other prefaces, these were villains out of a mythology which today seems almost as dated as the Ruritanias from which they came. But this book, although the title may seem less appropriate now than the first one, in retrospect, actually winds up a sequence as well as an era.
Some of the more dated notions which motivated the first two books, the themes of mercenary war-makers putting strings behind the international scene, to activate the puppet but ambitious rulers of minor countries such as Prince Rudolfs, play an almost casual part in this story, and do not need elaborate explanation here. This book can stand, better than the first two, purely on its merits as an adventure and a chase.
Needless to say, however, because of its period, it con tains anomalies which may have to be pointed out to some readers who have met the Saint only in his latest environments.
The Austria in which it begins, and the Germany in which it ends, were not only pre-NATO but pre-Hitler. (Although Adolf was busily on his way at the time, he had still not attained any great power, and was largely written off as a minor crackpot who would never really amount to anything.) The kind of mythical principality ruled by Prince Rudolf was still loosely acceptable to the popular imagination, at least as a nostalgic tradition, even though in fact there were precious few left which anyone could actually name.
It is, perhaps, a timely consolation to the writers of high adventure who would try to survive the present trend towards sordid back-street "realism" that although those fascinating plot-fertile Balkans have long since disappeared behind the gray shadows of the Iron Curtain, the surge of anti-colonialism and indiscriminate independence elsewhere has led to a proliferation of even more pint-sized and retrograde republics and dictatorships, all over the globe, than anyone but the United Nations secretariat and the most studious amateur geographers can keep track of. Perhaps, after all, these themes may yet have a romantic renaissance, in some new-born African or Asian Graustark.
Meanwhile, this book is offered simply as an adventure. It never aspired to be anything more.
I. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR FELL FROM GRACE
AND STANISLAUS WAS UNFORTUNATE
IT all began to happen with a ruthlessly irresistible kind of suddenness that was as unanswerable as an avalanche. It was like the venomously accurate little explosion that wrecks a dyke and overwhelms a country. The Saint has sworn that he did his level best to get from under—that he communed with his soul and struggled manfully against temptation. But he never had a chance.
On the bridge, scarcely a dozen yards away, the four men swayed and fought; and the Saint stood still and stared at them. He stood with one hand on Monty Hayward's arm and the other on Patricia Holm's, exactly as he had been walking when the astonishing beginning of the fight had halted him in his tracks like the bursting of a bomb, and surveyed the scene in silence. And it was during this silence (if the Saint can be believed) that he held the aforesaid converse with his soul.
The change that had taken place so abruptly in the landscape and general atmosphere of that particular piece of Innsbruck was certainly a trifle startling. Just one split second ago, it seemed, the harmless-looking little man who was now the focal point of the excitement had been the only specimen of humanity in sight. The deserted calm of the Herzog Otto Strasse ahead had been equalled only by the vacuous repose of the Rennweg behind, or the void tranquillity of the Hofgarten on the port side; and the harmless-looking little man was paddling innocently across the bridge on their right front with his innocuous little attaché case in his hand. And then, all at once, without the slightest warning or interval for parley, the three other combatants had materialized out of the shadows and launched themselves in a flying wedge upon him. Largely, solidly, and purposefully, they jammed him up against the parapet and proceeded to slug the life out of him.
The Saint's weight shifted gently on his toes, and he whistled a vague, soft sort of tune between his teeth. And then Monty Hayward detached his arm from the Saint's light grip, and the eyes of the two men met.
"I don't know," said Monty tentatively, "whether we can stand for this."
And Simon Templar nodded.
"I also," he murmured, "had my doubts."
He hitched himself thoughtfully forward. Over on the bridge, the chaotic welter of men heaved and writhed convulsively to a syncopated accompaniment of laboured breathing and irregularly thudding blows, varied from time to time by a guttural gasp of effort or a muffled yelp of pain. . . . And the Saint became dimly conscious that Patricia was holding his arm.
"Boy, listen—weren't you going to be good?"
He paused in his stride and turned. He smiled dreamily upon her. In his ears the scuffling undertones of the battle were ringing like celestial music. He was lost.
"Why—yes, old dear," he answered vaguely. "Sure, I'm going to be good. I just want to sort of look things over. See they don't get too rough." The idea took firmer shape in his mind. "I—I might argue gently with them, or something like that."
Certainly he was being good. His mind was as barren of all evil as a new-born babe's. Gentle but firm remonstrance—that was the scheme. Appeal to the nobler instincts. The coal-black mammy touch.
He approached the battle thoughtfully and circumspectly, like an entomologist scraping acquaintance with a new species of scorpion. Monty Hayward seemed to have disappeared completely into the deeper intestines of the potpourri, into which his advent had enthused a new and even more violent tempo. In that murderous jumble it was practically impossible to distinguish one party from another; but Simon reached down a thoughtfully probing hand into the tangle, felt the scruff of a thick neck, and yanked forth a man. For one soul-shaking instant they glared at each other in the dim light; and it became regrettably obvious to the Saint that the face he was regarding must have been without exception the most depraved and villainous specimen of its kind south of Munich. And therefore, with what he would always hold to be the most profound and irrefragably philosophic justification in the world, he hit it, thoughtfully and experimentally, upon the nose.
It was from that moment, probably, that the ruin of all his resolutions could be dated.
Psychologists, from whom no secrets are hidden, tell us that certain stimuli may possess such ancient and ineradicable associations that the reactions which they arouse are as automatic and inevitable as the yap of a trampled Peke. A bugle sounds, and the old war horse snorts with yearning. A gramophone record is played, and the septuagenarian burbles wheezily of an old love. A cork pops, and the mouths of the thirsty water. Such is life.
And even so did it happen to the Saint.
After all, he had done nothing desperately exciting for a long time. About twenty-one days. His subconscious was just ripe for the caressing touch of a few seductive stumuli. And then and there, when his resistance was at its lowest ebb, he heard and felt the juicy plo
nk of his fist sinking home into a nose.
The savour of that fruity squish wormed itself wheedlingly down into the very cockles of his heart. He liked it. It stirred the deepest chords of his being. And it dawned persuasively upon him that at that moment he desired nothing more of life than an immediate repetition of that feeling. And, seeing the nose once more conveniently poised in front of him, he hit it again.
He had not been mistaken. His subconscious knew its stuff. With the feel of that second biff a pleasant kind of glow centred itself in the pit of his stomach and tingled electrically outwards along his limbs, and the remainder of his doubts melted away before its spreading warmth. He was punching the nose of an ugly man, and he was liking it. Life had no more to offer.
The ugly man went sprawling back across the bridge. Then he came in again with his arms flailing, and the Saint welcomed him joyfully with a crisp half-arm jolt to the ribs. As he fetched up with a gasp, Simon picked a haymaker off the ground and crashed him in a limp heap.
The Saint straightened his coat and looked around for further inspiration.
The party had begun to sort itself out. A couple of paces away, Monty Hayward was giving the second thug a whole-time job; and right beside him the third hoodlum was kneeling on the inoffensive little man's chest, squeezing his windpipe with one hand and fumbling in his pocket with the other.
Some of which may help to explain why the third hoodlum was so utterly and devastatingly surprised by the next few things that happened to him. Undoubtedly his impression of the events that crowded themselves into the following eight seconds was a trifle hazy. A pair of sinewy hands locked themselves together beneath his chin, and he was conscious of a tall, lean shape leaning affectionately over him. And then he was hurled backwards into the air with a jerk that nearly dislocated his spine. He rolled dizzily over on his knee, reaching for his hip pocket; and the Saint laughed. It was the one move that had not till then been made—the move that Simon had been waiting and hoping for with all the concentrated power of his dismantled virtue—the move that flooded the one missing colour into the angelic beauty of the night.
"Dear heart!" said the Saint, and leapt at him like a panther.
The man was halfway to his feet when the Saint hit him, and his hand was less than halfway out of his pocket. The blow clicked his head back with a force that rocked his cervical vertebræ in their sockets, and he slumped blindly up against the parapet.
Simon piled smotheringly on top of him. Over the man's shoulder he caught a fleeting glimpse of the dark waters of the river hurtling sleekly past and breaking creamily against the broad piers of the bridge—for the Inn is none of your dignified and stately streams, it comes pelting down from the Alps like a young tidal wave—and the little fighting smile that played round the Saint's lips slowly widened to an unholy grin. His right arm circled lovingly round the man's legs. After all—why not?
"Saturday night is bath night, brother," said the Saint.
His left hand pushed the man's face down, and his right arm hauled upwards. The parapet was squarely in the small of his victim's back, and it was easy. The man pivoted over the masonry with an airy grace to which he had contributed no effort at all, and disappeared from view with a faint squawking noise. . . .
For a second or two the Saint gazed beatifically down upon the bubbles that broke the surface of the icy torrent, letting the sweetest taste of battle soak lusciously into his palate. The die was cast. The last, least hope of salvation that he might have had was shredded up and scattered to the winds. He felt as if a great load had been lifted from his mind. The old days had come back. The fighting and the fun had come back of their own accord, without his seeking, because they were his allotted portion—the rescuing of small men in distress, and the welting of the ungodly on the boko. And it was very good that these things should be so. It was a beautiful and solemn thought for a man who had been good for three whole weeks.
He turned around with a happy little sigh, nebulously wondering whether he had by some mischance overlooked any other opportunities of nailing down the coffin of his virtue. But a temporary peace had settled on the scene of strife. The man with the exceptionally villainous face was still in no condition to continue with the argument. The harmless-looking little man was sitting weakly in the gutter with his head in his hands. And on the head of the remaining tough sat Monty Hayward, licking a skinned set of knuckles. He looked up at the Saint with an air of quiet reflection.
"You know," he said, "I'm not sure that a cold bath would do this bird a lot of harm, either."
The Saint laughed suddenly.
"Let's go," he said.
He stooped and grasped the man's ankles. Monty took the shoulders. The man shot upwards and outwards into space like a clay pigeon from a trap. ...
They turned again. In the middle of the road, the last of the Mohicans was crawling malevolently to his feet; and his hand also, like the hand of his predecessor, was fetching something from his pocket. . . . For the third time, Simon looked at Monty, and Monty looked at the Saint. Their attitudes were sober and judicial; but neither was able to read in the other's eyes the bashfullest suggestion that the good work should go unfinished. . . . The Saint nodded, and they streaked oft the mark as one man. The hoodlum was borne away towards the wall. There was a wild whirl of arms and legs, a splash, and a silence. . . .
Simon Templar dusted his coat.
"Somehow or other," he remarked, after a short interval of contented rumination, "we seem to have disposed of the opposition. Let's have a look at Little Willie."
He walked over and hitched the cause of all the trouble to its feet. In the clear light of one of the standard lamps mounted on the parapet, he saw a thin, sallow face from which two dull brown eyes blinked at him dazedly. Simon studied the little man curiously. On closer inspection, the prize he had collected from the lucky dip seemed a rather inadequate reward for the expenditure of so much energy and mental stress; but the Saint had a sublime faith in his good fortune.
"Where were you on your way to, George?" he inquired affably.
The little man shook his head.
"Ich verstehe nicht."
"Wohin wollten Sie gehen?" repeated the Saint, translating.
To his surprise, the little man's lips tightened, and a sullen glaze came over his eyes. He almost snarled out his reply.
"Ich will gar nichts sagen."
Simon frowned.
Somewhere a new shrill noise was drifting through the stillness of the night, and he realized that both Monty and Patricia were standing rather tensely at his side; but he paid no attention. His brain registered the impressions as if it received them through a fog. He had no time to think about them then.
A little pulse was beating deep within him, throbbing and surging up in a breathless fever of surmise. The stubborn rigid-ness of the small man's mouth had started it, and the harsh violence of his voice had suddenly quickened it to a great pounding tumult that welled clamorously up and hammered on the doors of understanding. It was preposterous, absurd, fantastic; and yet with an almost jubilant fatalism he knew that it was true.
Somewhere there was a catch. The smooth simplicity of things as he had seen them till that instant was a delusion and a snare. A child of ten could have perceived it; and yet the deception had been so bland and natural that the unmasking of it had the effect of a battering ram aimed at the solar plexus. And it had all been so forthright and aboveboard. A small and harmless-looking little man is hurrying home with his week's wages in his little bag. Three hairy thugs set on him and proceed to beat him up. Like a good citizen, you intervene. You swipe the ungodly on the snitch, and rescue Reginald. And then, most naturally, you approach your protégé. You prepare to comfort him and bathe his wounds, what time he hails you as his hero and sends for the solicitors to revise his will. In your role of the compleat Samaritan, you inquire whither he was going, so that you may offer to shepherd him a little further on his
way. . . . And then he bites your head off——
The Saint laughed.
"Yes, yes, I know, brother." Very gently and soothingly he spoke, just as before; but way down in the impenetrable undertones of his voice that whisper of soft laughter was lilting about like a mirthful will-o'-the-wisp. "But you've got us all wrong. Sie haben uns alles falsch gegotten. Verstehen Sie Esperanto? All those naughty men have gone. We've just saved your life. We're your bosom pals. Freunde. Kamerad. Gott mit uns, and all that sort of thing."
The German language has been spoken better. The Saint himself, who could speak it like a native when he chose, would have been the first to acknowledge that. But he computed that he had made his meaning fairly clear. Intelligible enough, at any rate, to encourage any ordinary person to investigate his credentials without actual hostility. And definitely he had given no just cause for the response which he received.
Perhaps the little man's normal nerve had been blown into space by his adventure. Perhaps his head was still muzzy with the painful memory of his recent experience. These questions can never now be satisfactorily settled. It is only certain that be was incredibly foolish.
With a vicious squeal that contorted his whole face, he wrenched one arm free from the Saint's grip and clawed at the Saint's eyes like a tigercat. And with that movement all doubts vanished from Simon Templar's mind.
"Not quite so quickly, Stanislaus," he drawled.
He swerved adroitly past the tearing fingers and pinned the little man resistlessly against the wall; and then he felt Monty Hayward's hand on his shoulder.
"If you don't mind me interrupting you, old man," Monty said coolly, "is that bloke over there a friend of yours?"
Simon looked up.
Along the Rennweg, less than a hundred yards away, a man in an unmistakable uniform was blundering towards them with his whistle screaming as he ran; and the Saint grasped the meaning of the omens that had been drifting blurredly through his senses while he was occupied with other things. He grasped their meaning with scarcely a second's pause, in all its fatal and far-reaching implications; and in the next second he knew, with a reckless certainty, what he was doomed to do.
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