The Law was trying to horn in on his party. At that very moment it was thumping vociferously towards him on its great flat feet, loaded up to its flapping ears with all the elephantine pomposity of the system which it represented, walloping along to crash the gate of his conviviality with its inept and fatuous presence—just as it had been wont to do so often in the past. And this time there were bigger and better reasons than there had ever been why that intrusion could not be allowed. Those reasons might not have seemed so instantaneously conclusive to the casual and unimaginative observer; but to the Saint they stuck out like the skyline of Chicago. And Simon found that he was no less mad than he had always been.
Under his hold, the little man squirmed sideways like a demented eel, and the attaché case which he was still clutching desperately in his right hand smashed at the Saint's head in a homicidal arc. Lazily the Saint swayed back two inches outside the radius of the blow; and lazily, almost absent-mindedly, he clipped the little man under the jaw and dropped him in his tracks. ...
And then he turned and faced the others, and his eyes were the two least lazy things that either of them had ever seen.
"This is just too soon for our picnic to break up," he said.
He stooped and seized the little man by the collar and flung him over his shoulder like a sack of coals. The attaché case dangled from the little man's wrist by a short length of chain; and the Saint gathered it in with his right hand. The discovery of the chain failed to amaze him: he took it in his stride, as a detail that was no more than an incidental feature of the general problem, which could be analyzed and put in its right place at a more leisured opportunity. Undoubtedly he was quite mad. But he was mad with that magnificent simplicity which is only a hair's breadth from genius; and of such is the kingdom of adventurers.
The Saint was smiling as he ran.
He knew exactly what he had done. In the space of about two minutes thirty-seven seconds, he had inflicted on his newest and most fragile halo a series of calamities that made such minor nuisances as the San Francisco earthquake appear positively playful by comparison. Just by way of an hors-d'oeuvre. And there was no going back. He had waltzed irrevocably off the slippery tight wire of righteousness; and that was that. He felt fine.
At the end of the bridge he caught Patricia's arm. Down to the right, he knew, a low wall ran beside the river, with a narrow ledge on the far side that would provide a precarious but possible foothold. He pointed.
"Play leapfrog, darling."
She nodded without a word, and went over like a schoolboy. Simon's hand smote Monty on the back.
"See you in ten minutes, laddie," he murmured.
He tumbled nimbly over the wall with his light burden on his back, and hung there by his fingers and toes three inches above the hissing waters while Monty's footsteps faded away into the distance. A moment later the patrolman's heavy boots clumped off the bridge and lumbered by without a pause.
2
Steadily the plodding hoofbeats receded until they were scarcely more than an indistinguishable patter; and the intermittent blasts of the patrolman's whistle became mere plaintive squeaks from the Antipodes. An expansive aura of peace settled down again upon the wee small hours, and made itself at home.
The Saint hooked one eye cautiously over the stonework and surveyed the scene. There was no sign of hurrying reinforcements trampling on each other in their zeal to answer the patrolman's frenzied blowing. Simon, knowing that the inhabitants of most Continental cities have a sublime and blessed gift of minding their own business, was not so much surprised as satisfied. He pulled himself nimbly over the wall again and reached a hand down to Pat. In another second she was standing beside him in the road. She regarded him dispassionately.
"I always knew you ought to be locked up," she said. "And now I expect you will be."
The Saint returned her gaze with wide blue eyes of Saintly innocence.
"And why?" he asked. "My dear soul—why? What else could we do? Our reasoning process was absolutely elementary. The Law was on its way, and we didn't want to meet the Law. Therefore we beetled off. Stanislaus was just beginning to get interesting: we were not through with Stanislaus. Therefore we took Stanislaus with us. What could be simpler?"
"It's not the sort of thing," said Patricia mildly, "that respectable people do."
"It's the sort of thing we do," said the Saint
She fell into step beside him; and the Saint warbled on in the extravagant vein to which such occasions invariably moved him.
"Talking of the immortal name of Stanislaus," he said, "reminds me of the celebrated Dr. Stanislaus Leberwurst, a bloke that we ought to meet some day. He applied his efforts to the problems of marine engineering, working from the hitherto ignored principle of mechanics that attraction and repulsion are equal and opposite. After eighty years of research he perfected a bateau in which the propelling force was derived from an enormous roll of blotting paper, which was fed into the water by clockwork from the bows of the ship. The blotting paper soaked up the water, and the water soaked up the blotting paper, thereby towing the contraption through the briny, the project was taken up by the Czecho-Slovakian Navy, but was later abandoned in favour of tandem teams of trained herrings."
Patricia laughed and tucked her hand through his arm.
In such a mood as that it was. impossible to argue with the Saint—impossible even to cast the minutest drop of dampness on his exuberant delight. And if she had not known that it was impossible, perhaps she would not have said a word. But the puckish mischief that she loved danced in his eyes, and she knew that he would always be the same.
"Where do we make for now?" she inquired calmly.
"The old pub," said the Saint. "And that is where we probe further into the private life of Stanislaus." He grinned boyishly. "My God, Pat-—when I think of what life might have been if we'd left Stanislaus behind, it makes my blood bubble. He's the brightest ray of sunshine I've seen in weeks. I wouldn't lose him for worlds."
The girl smiled helplessly. After she had taken a good look at the circumstances, it seemed the only thing to do. When you are walking brazenly through the streets of a foreign city arm-in-arm with a man who is carrying over his shoulder the abducted body of a perfect stranger whom for want of better information he has christened Stanislaus—a man, moreover, who is incapable of showing any symptoms of guilt or agitation over this procedure—the respectable reactions which your Auntie Ethel would expect of you are liable to an attack of the dumb staggers.
Patricia Holm sighed.
Vaguely, she wondered if there were any power on earth that could shake the Saint's faith in his guardian angels; but the question never seemed to occur to the Saint himself. During the whole of that walk back to "the old pub"—in actual fact it took only a few minutes, but to her it felt like a few hours—she would have sworn that not one hair of the Saint's dark head was turned a millimetre out of its place by the slightest glimmer of anxiety. He was happy. He was looking ahead into his adventure. If he had thought at all about the risks of their route to the old pub, he would have done so with the same dazzlingly childlike simplicity as he followed for his guiding star in all such difficulties. He was taking Stanislaus home; and if anybody tried to raise any objections to that manoeuvre—well, Simon Templar's own floral offering would certainly provide the nucleus of a swell funeral. . . .
But no such objection was made. The streets of Innsbruck maintained their unruffled silence, and stayed benevolently bare: even the distant yipping of the patrolman's whistle had stopped. And Simon was standing under the shadow of the wall that had been his unarguable destination, glancing keenly up and down the deserted thoroughfare which it bordered.
"This is indubitably the reward of virtue," he remarked.
Stanislaus went to the top of the wall with one quick heave, and the Saint stooped again. Patricia felt his hands grip round her knees, and she was lifted into the air as if sh
e had been a feather: she had scarcely settled herself on the wall when the Saint was up beside her and down again on the other side like a great grey cat. She saw him dimly in the darkness below as she swung her legs over, and glimpsed the flash of his white teeth; irresistibly she was reminded of another time when he had sent her over a wall, in the first adventure she had shared with him—one lean, strong hand had been stretched up to her exactly as it was stretched up now, only then it was stretched upwards in a flourish of debonair farewell—and a deep and abiding contentment surged through her as she jumped for him to catch her in his arms. He eased her to the ground as lightly as if she were landing in cotton wool. She heard his voice in a blithe whisper: "Isn't this the life?"
Above her, on her right, towered the cubical black bulk of the old pub—the Hotel Königshof, hugest and most palatial of all the hotels in Tirol, which the Saint had chosen just twelve hours ago for their headquarters. There, with a strategic eye for possible emergencies of a rather different kind, he had selected a suite on the ground floor with tall casement windows opening directly onto the ornamental gardens; and the fact that it was the only suite of its kind in the building and cost above five pounds a minute could not outweigh its equally unique advantages.
"Straight along in, old dear," spoke the Saint's whisper, "and I'll be right after you with Stanislaus."
She started off, feeling her way uncertainly between confusedly remembered flower beds; but he was beside her again in a moment, steering her with an unerring instinct over clear, level turf. The windows of their sitting room were already open, and he found them faultlessly. Inside the room, she heard him opening a door; and when she had found the switch and clicked on the lights the room was empty.
And then he came back through the communicating door of the bedroom, closing it behind him, and gazed at her reproachfully.
"Pat, was that the way I raised you—to let loose all the limes and invite the whole world to gape at us?"
He went over and drew the curtains; and then he turned back, and her rueful excuses were swept away into thin air with his gay laugh.
"In spite of which," he observed soberly, "it's better to be too careful than too optimistic. The results are likely to be less permanently distressing." He smiled again, and slid an arm along her shoulders. "And now what do you think we could do with a cigarette?"
He pulled out his case and sank luxuriously into a chair. Patricia ranged herself on the arm.
"Are you leaving Stanislaus in the bedroom to cool off?"
Simon nodded.
"He's there. You can go in and kiss him goodnight if you like—he sleeps the sleep of the just. I handcuffed him to the bed and left him to his dreams while we decide what to do with him."
"And what happens if he wakes up and starts yelling his head off?"
The Saint blew out a long, complacent wisp of smoke.
"Stanislaus won't yell," he said. "If there's one thing that Stanislaus won't do when he wakes up, it's yell. He may utter a few subdued bleating cries, but he'll do nothing noisier than that. I've been doing a lot of cerebration over Stanislaus recently, and I'm willing to bet that the din he'll make will be so deafening that you could use it for the synchronized accompaniment of a film illustrating a chess tournament in a monastery of dumb Trappists. Take that from me."
A gentle knock sounded from the outer door of the suite; and the Saint peeped at his watch as he unrolled himself from his chair and sauntered across the room. It was five minutes to three—just thirty-five clocked minutes since they had detached themselves from the Breinössl and set out to ventilate their lungs before turning in, on that idle stroll beside the river which was to lead them into such strange and perilous paths. The night had wasted no time. And yet, if Simon Templar had had any inkling of the landslide of skylarking and song that was destined to be poured into his young life before that night's work had been fully accounted for, even he might have hesitated.
But he did not know. He opened the door three inches, checked up the pleasantly familiar features that surrounded Monty Hayward's small and sanitary moustache, and pulled him through. Then he slid the bolts cautiously into their sockets and filtered back into the sitting room with his cigarette tilting buoyantly up between his lips.
"What-ho, troops!" he murmured breezily. "And how do we all feel after our culture physique?"
"I don't think I want to talk to you," said Monty. "You're not nice to know."
The Saint's eyebrows slanted at him mockingly.
"Scarface Al Hayward will now tell us about his collection of early Woolworth porcelain," he drawled. " 'I never wanted a drag in politics or any other racket,' says Scarface Al. 'Art is the only thing that counts a damn with me. Why can't you guys ever leave me alone?' "
Monty laughed, operating the Saint's cigarette case with one hand and a siphon with the other.
"Surely. But still—this sort of thing's all very well for you, old sportsman, seeing as how you've chosen to make it your job; but why d'you want to boot me into it?"
"My dear chap, I thought it would be good for your liver. Besides, you can run awfully fast."
Monty plugged a cushion at him and went over and sat on the arm of the chair which Patricia had taken.
"Do you allow him to do this sort of thing, Pat?" he asked.
"What sort of thing?" inquired the girl blandly.
"Why—inveigling respectable editors into free fights and kidnappings and what not Haven't you noticed what he's been doing all night? He goes around throwing people into rivers— he grabs people off the streets and runs away with them—he lets his pals be chased all over Europe by hordes of heathen policemen, while he goes and hides—and then he stands around here as happy as a dog with a new flea and can't see anything to apologize for. Is that the way you let him behave?"
"Yes," said Patricia imperturbably.
The Saint picked up a glass and hitched himself onto the table. He blew Patricia a kiss and looked at Monty Hayward thoughtfully.
"Seriously, old lad," he said, "we owe you no small hand. You drew the fire like a blinkin' hero—just as if you'd been trained to it from the kindergarten. But I'm damned sorry if you feel you've been landed in a place where you ought not to be. There's no one I'd rather have with me in a spot of good clean fun, but if you really hear the call of the old hymn book and hassock——"
Monty flicked ash into the fireplace.
"It's not the hymn book and hassock, you fathead—it's the Consolidated Press. As I told you at dinner, I've done a week's job in a couple of days, so I reckon I've earned five days' holiday. But that's not going to help me a lot if at the end of those five days I'm just beginning a fifteen-year stretch in some beastly German clink. . . . Anyway, what's happened to Stanislaus?"
Simon jerked a thumb towards the bedroom door.
"I dumped him out of the way. When he comes to, he's going to throw a heap of light on some dark subjects. I was waiting for you to arrive before I did anything to speed up his awakening, so that you could join the interested audience." He stood up and crushed his cigarette end into an ash tray. "And in the circumstances, Monty, that seems to be the very next item on the programme. We'll get together and hear Stanislaus give tongue, and then we'll have a little more idea of the scheme of events and prizes in this here rodeo."
Monty nodded.
"That seems a fairly sound notion," he said.
The Saint went over and opened the communicating door. He had taken two steps into the room when he felt a distinct draught of cold air fanning his face; and then his eyes had attuned themselves to the darkness, and he saw the rectangle of starlight where the window was. He stepped back without a sound, and his hand caught Monty's fingers on the electric light switch.
"Not for just a moment, old dear," he said quietly. "That was the mistake Pat made."
He vanished into the gloom; and in a little while Monty heard a faint metallic rattle and saw the Saint's figure silhouetted against the oblon
g of dim light. Simon was dosing the window carefully—and Simon knew quite well that that window had already been closed when he dropped Stanislaus on the bed and handcuffed him there. But the Saint was perfectly calm about it. He drew the curtains across the window, and turned; and his voice spoke evenly out of the dark.
"The notion was very sound, Monty—very sound indeed," he said. "Only it was a little late. You can put the light on now."
Light came, drenching down in a sudden blazing flood from the central panel in the ceiling and the alabaster-shaded brackets along the walls. It quenched itself in the deep green curtains and the priceless carpet that had been fitted to a queen's bedchamber, and lay whitely over the spotless linen of the carved oak bed. In the middle of that snowy expanse, the little man looked queerly black and twisted.
The ivory hilt of a stiletto stood out starkly from the stained cloth of his shirt, and his upturned eyes were wide and staring. Even as they looked at him, his right hand sagged lower over the side of the bed, and the attaché case that dangled from his wrist settled on the floor with a dull thud.
II. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WAS UNREPENTANT,
AND THE PARTY WAS CONSIDERABLY
PEPPED UP
SIMON unlocked the handcuffs and dropped them into his pocket. He was far too accustomed to the sight of sudden and violent death to be disturbed in any conventional way by what had happened; but even so, a parade of ghostly icicles was crawling down his spine. Death that struck so swiftly and mercilessly was just a little more than he had expected to encounter so early in the festivities. It was a threat and a challenge that could not be misunderstood.
"How did it happen?" Patricia asked, breaking the silence in its sixth second; and the Saint smiled.
The Saint's Getaway Page 2
