"Must you follow me everywhere?" she squeaked. "You and your filthy germs——"
"Madam, we were just having a little bug hunt," said the Saint soothingly; and then the woman saw the gun in his hand and rushed to the communication cord with a shrill scream.
Simon grinned faintly and glanced past her out of the window. They were running over a low embankment at the foot of which was a thick wood; he couldn't have arranged it better if he had tried—it was the one slice of luck that had come to him without a string on it that day.
"Saved us the trouble," murmured the Saint philosophically.
He was wedging his automatic at an angle between the sliding door and its frame, so that it pointed slantingly down the corridor. The train was slowing down rapidly, and he prayed that that whiskered gag would get by for as long as they took to stop. Also he had an idea that the alarm given by the frightened lady would push a hairier fly into the ointment of the ungodly than anything else that could have happened.
He looked round and saw the shadow of puzzlement on Patricia's forehead.
"Has anything gone wrong, lad?" she asked; and the question struck him as so comic that he had to laugh.
"Nothing to speak of," he said. "It's only a few rough men trying to kill us, but we've had people try that before."
"Then why did you want the train stopped?"
"Because I want to back Bugle Call for the Derby, and I've heard no news of totes in heaven. I can't think when we've been so unpopular. It seems a lot of fuss to make over one little blue diamond, but I suppose Rudolf knows best."
He went over to the other side of the compartment and opened the window wide. The train was grinding itself to a standstill, and once it came to rest there would be very little time to spare. In one corner, the apostle of strength and silence was clutching her Pekinese and moaning hysterically at intervals. Simon ruffled the dog's ears, hauled himself up with his hands on the two luggage racks, and swung his legs acrobatically over the sill.
2
Monty Hayward was a couple of coaches farther north when the train stopped.
He had begun to drift thoughtfully southward a minute or two after Patricia Holm left him. The Saint's instructions to engage someone in conversation appealed to him. He felt that a spot of light-hearted relaxation was just what he needed. And the orders he had been given seemed to leave him as free a hand as he could have desired. The prospect lifted up his spirits like an exile's dream of home.
He squeezed past a group of chattering Italians and came up beside the girl who was gazing pensively through a window near the end of the corridor. She moved aside abstractedly to let him pass, but Monty had other ideas.
"Don't you know that policemen get their flat feet from standing about all day?" he said reproachfully.
The girl looked at him critically for several seconds, and Monty endured the scrutiny without blinking. There was a curl of soft gold escaping from under one side of her rakish little hat, and her lips had a sweet curve. And then she smiled.
"Can you tell me what that station was that we just went through?" she asked.
"Ausgang," said Monty. "I saw it written up."
She laughed.
"Idiot! That means 'Way Out.' "
"Does it?" said Monty innocently. "Then I must have been thinking of some other place." He offered his cigarette case. "I gather that this isn't your first visit to these parts."
She accepted a cigarette and a light with an entire absence of self-consciousness, which was one of the most refreshing and' at the same time one of the most complimentary gestures that he had seen for a long time.
"I ought to know the language," she said. "My father was born in Munich—he didn't become an American citizen until he was three years old. But still, they say it's a young country." She had a frank carelessness of conventional snobbery that matched her natural grace of manner. "As a matter of fact, I've just finished spending a fortnight with his family. That was the excuse I made for coming over, so I couldn't get out of it"
"My father was a Plymouth Brother," said Monty rerniniscently. "He once thought of going abroad to convert the heathen, but Mother didn't trust him. Now, if he'd been a Bavarian, I might have been your cousin—and that would have been a quite different story."
"Why?"
"I should have refused to allow you to leave us without a chaperon."
"Would you?"
"I would. And then I'd have proposed myself for the job. I'm not sure that it's too late even now. Could I interest you in a thoroughly good watchdog, guaranteed house-trained and very good with children?"
She glanced at him mischievously.
"I should want to see your references."
"I was four years in my last place, lady."
"That's a long time."
"Yes, mum. I was supposed to be in for seven, but there was a riot, and I climbed over a wall."
He was confirmed in an early impression that her laugh was like a ripple of crystal bells. She had very white teeth, and eyes like amethysts, and he thought that she was far too nice to be travelling alone.
She turned back her sleeve and consulted a tiny gold watch.
"Do you think they'll ever serve tea?" she said. "I've got one of the world's great thirsts, and Germany doesn't care."
Monty had a saddening sense of anticlimax. He was starting to realize the sordid disadvantages of being a buccaneer. You can take a beauteous damsel's acquaintance by storm, but you can't offer her a cup of tea. He felt that the twentieth century was uncommonly inconsiderate to its outlaws. He tried to picture Captain Kidd in a similar predicament. "I'd love to buy you a glass of milk, my dear, but Grandma's walking the plank at five. . . ."
"I'm afraid you've beaten me," he said. "I'm not allowed to move from here until Simon gets back."
"And what's Simon doing?"
"Well, he's trying to find some crown jewels; and if he gets shot at I'm supposed to go along and get shot as well."
The girl looked at him with a slight frown. "That one's a bit too deep for me," she said.
"It's much too deep for me," Monty confessed. "But I've given up worrying about it. I don't look like a desperate character, do I?"
She contemplated him with a renewal of the detached curiosity with which she had estimated his first advance. Her ancestry might have been German, but her quiet self-possession belonged wholly to the American tradition. Monty would have counted the day well spent if he had been free to take her under his wing; but his ears were straining through the continuous clatter of the train for the first warnings of the violent and unlawful things that must soon be happening somewhere in the south, and he knew that that pleasant interlude could not last for long. He returned her gaze without embarrassment, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was wanted for murder.
"You look fairly sane," she said.
"I used to think so myself," said Monty amusedly. "It's only when I come out in a rash and find myself biting postmen in the leg that I have my doubts."
"Then you might let me share the joke."
"My dear, I'd like to share lots of things with you. But that one isn't my own property."
The full blaze of her unaffected loveliness would have dazzled a lesser man.
"Weren't you ever warned that it's dangerous to tease an inquisitive woman?"
Monty laughed.
"Why not have half my shirt instead?" he suggested cheerfully; and then the sudden check of the train as the brakes came on literally threw her into his arms.
He restored her gently to her balance, and found himself abstractedly fingering the butt of the gun in his pocket while she apologized. He needed the concrete reminder of that cold, metallic contact to fetch him back to the outlook from which he had been trying to escape—the view of his corner of the world as a place where murder and sudden death were commonplaces, and freedom continued only as the reward of a ceaseless vigilance.
"That's all right," he sai
d absently. "You didn't have to help yourself to it. If you'd asked me for it I'd have given it to you."
He kept his hand in his pocket and stared out of a window at the finest angle that he could manage. Instinct alone told him that the stoppage had nothing to do with any ordinary incident of the journey—it was the hint that he had been waiting for, the zero signal that strung up his nerves to the last brittle ounce of expectation. Beside him, the girl was saying something; but he never had the vaguest idea what it was. He was listening for an intimation of how the typhoon would burst, knowing beyond all possibility of evasion that the break-up was as inevitable as the collapse of a house of cards. For a moment he felt like a man who has just seen the tail of a slow fuse vanishing into a cask of gunpowder: the uncanny hush that had settled down after the train pulled up seemed to span out to the cracking brink of eternity. He heard the sibilant hiss of the Westinghouse valves, the subdued mutter of voices from a dozen compartments, the distant clank of a coupling shaking down into equilibrium; but his brain was striving to tune through those normal sounds to the first whisper of the abnormal—speculating whether it would come as a babel of enraged throats or the unequivocal stammer of artillery.
Then a door was flung open up at the northward end of the carriage, and the heavy tread of official-sounding boots made his heart miss a beat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two men in uniform advancing down the passage. They stopped at the first compartment and barked a question; and the chattering of the group of Italians farther up died away abruptly. A deeper stillness lapped down on the perspective, and through it Monty heard the question repeated and the boots moving on.
He felt the girl gripping his arm and heard her speaking again.
"Say, don't you Englishmen ever get excited? Somebody's pulled the communication cord. Boy, isn't that thrilling?"
Monty nodded. The officials came nearer, interrogating each compartment as they reached it. One of them turned aside to accost him with the same standardized inquiry, and Monty schooled his features to the requisite expression of sheep-like repudiation.
"Nein—ich habe nichts gehört."
The inquisition passed on, and the group of Italians trailed gaping after them. A fresh buzz of conversation broke out along the carriage.
Monty found the girl eyeing him indignantly.
"Were you trying to kid me you didn't speak German?" she demanded.
He faced her shamelessly.
"I must have forgotten it for the moment."
"Anyway," she affirmed, "I'm going to see what it's all about This is much too good to miss."
Monty looked at her steadily. He realized that he had put his foot in it from nearly every conceivable aspect, but it was too late to draw back.
"I should keep out of it if I were you," he said quietly, and there was that in his tone which ought to have told her that he was in earnest.
He walked past her without giving her time to reply, and went through to the tiny lobby at the end of the coach. It was pure intuition, again, which told him that the stopping of the train must have its repercussions outside—whoever had given the alarm. He opened the door at one side and looked out, but he could discover no exterior symptoms of a disturbance; then he crossed to the other side, and the first thing he saw was Simon Templar skidding elegantly down the embankment towards the trees. A second later he saw that Patricia Holm was already at the foot of the slope: the Saint was taking his time, glancing back over his shoulder as he went.
It was Monty Hayward that the Saint was looking for, and the sight he had of him was a considerable relief.
"If you stayed well back among that timber, Pat, you might live a long time," he murmured. "I don't think Marcovitch'll run the risk of taking pot shots at us now, but it's best to be on the safe side."
He waved to the figure in the doorway and strolled along the bottom of the embankment to meet him. It was not entirely typical of the Saint that he scorned to follow his own advice and take cover, but Simon was beginning to feel that he had done a lot of work that day with his rudder to the wind, and that unheroic position had lost a great deal of its charm. He waited until Monty had scrambled down to the low level before he turned off and steered him through a narrow path into the shelter of the wood; and his recklessness was justified by the fact that there was no more shooting.
"I'm afraid this is good-bye to our luggage," said the Saint, by way of explanation, "but let's think what we've saved in death duties."
"Was it as bad as that?" asked Monty; and Simon laughed.
"I reckon a swell time was had by all."
They came out into a small clearing around the roots of a giant elm, and at the same tune Patricia Holm threaded her way through the shrubbery on the opposite side and joined them under the tree.
From where they stood they could get a strip view of the train without being seen. An assortment of passengers from various carriages had climbed out and scattered themselves along the permanent way; a few of them were dislocating their necks in the attempt to peer through into the depths of the wood, but the majority were heading excitedly down to add their personalities to the knot of gesticulating orators who were thumping the air beside the brake van. The principal performers appeared to be Marcovitch, the two uniformed officials, and the lady with the Pekinese. Flourishing their arms wildly towards the unresponsive heavens on the rare occasions when words failed them, they were engaged in shouting each other down with a tireless vociferousness that would have gladdened the heart of an argumentative Frenchman. It was several minutes before the lady in black bombazine began to turn purple for lack of breath; and then the Pekinese, seizing its chance, rushed into the conference with a series of strident yaps which worthily maintained the standard of uproar. Simon gathered that Marcovitch was keeping his end up with no great difficulty. His voice, when it rose above the oratorio, could be heard speaking passionately of bandits, thieves, robbers, murderers, battles, perils, pursuits, escapes, and his own remarkable perspicacity and valour; and the generous pantomime of his hands supplied everything that was drowned by the persistence of the other speakers. From time to time the other members of his party chimed in with their corroboration.
"That little skunk'll qualify himself for a medal before he's through," said the Saint fascinatedly. "He's the loveliest liar since Ulysses."
"What was the truth of it?" asked Monty.
Simon put his hands on his hips and continued to gaze up at the drama on the line.
"We were bounced off," he said simply. "Marcovitch rode us out on a rail. I'm not bragging about it. He'd cleaned up the van when I got there—and my guess was right The jewels were travelling with us. His pockets were stuffed with 'em, and I saw a diamond he'd dropped wedged between the floor boards to make it a cinch. And right there when I blew in it was a choice of death or get from under. We got from under— just."
The smile on the Saint's lips was as superficial as a reflection in burnished bronze. There was something of the implacable immobility of a watching Indian about him as he stood at gaze with his eyes narrowed against the sun. The staccato sentences of his synopsis broke off like a melody cut short in the middle of a bar, leaving his listeners in midair; but the conclusion was carved deep into the unforgetting contours of his face. He wasn't complaining. He wasn't saying a word about the run of the cards. He wasn't even elaborating one single vaporous prophecy about what might happen when he and Marcovitch got together again over a bottle of vodka to yarn over old times. Not just at that moment But the indomitable purpose of it was etched into every facet of his unnatural quiescence, sheathing him like a skin of invisible steel. And once again the parting riddle of Josef Krauss went ticking through the core of his stillness like a gramophone record that has jammed its needle into one hard-worn groove. . . .
And then the gas picnic up on the track began to sort itself out. One of the officials tore himself away from the centre of rhetoric and started to urge the passengers back into
their carriages. The empurpled lady lifted her yapping paladin tenderly into the last coach, and was in her turn assisted steatopygously upwards. The second official, brandishing a large notebook vaguely in his left hand, pressed the still voluble Marcovitch after her. Gradually the train re-absorbed its jabbering debris like a large and sedate vacuum cleaner. The locomotive, succumbing at last to the force of overwhelming example, let out a mighty cloud of steam and wagged its tail triumphantly. Somebody blew a whistle; and the northbound express resumed its interrupted journey.
Simon Templar turned away from the emptying landscape with an imperceptible shrug. He had not expected any impromptu search party to be organized. A trio of armed and desperate mail bandits would have very few attractions as a quarry to a trainload of agitated tourists, and transcontinental expresses cannot be left lying about the track while their passengers play a game of hare and hounds. The incident would be reported at the next station, twenty miles up the line, and the whole responsibility turned over to the police. And the getaway would have to find its own way on.
The Saint threw himself down on a bank of grass, and lay back with his hands behind his head, staring up into the sky through the soft green tracery of the leaves.
"After all," he said profoundly, "life is just a bowl of cherries." Patricia leaned on the trunk of the great tree and kicked at a stone.
"You might have borrowed Monty's gun and plugged Marcovitch while he was talking," she said wistfully.
"Sure. And then I don't suppose they'd even have had to bother to turn out his pockets. The minute he became horizontal he'd 've cascaded diamonds like a dream come true. I don't know how you feel about it, old girl, but I should just hate those jools to fall into the hands of the police. It might be kind of difficult to establish our claim and get 'em back."
The Saint's Getaway Page 13
