"I have still to enjoy the little talk I spoke of," said the Saint. "But your part in it is silent. You must not be allowed to interrupt. I assure you, it would distress me to have to stun you while you are defenseless, and then gag you, before I placed you in that cabinet. The alternative is in your own hands. I shall require you to stand inside the cabinet during my conversation. You will do nothing to betray your presence, whatever you hear, until five minutes after I have finally left the room."
"May I know your object?"
"You will realize it soon enough."
The white-haired soldier hesitated, and in his hesitation the younger man let loose a string of snarling protests.
The chief cut him short with a movement of his head.
"We do not help ourselves by inviting injury, Inspecktor," he said. "I shall give my parole."
The Saint bowed. In that self-possessed, white-haired chief of police he recognized a quality of manhood which he would have been glad to meet at any time.
"I am in your debt, Herr Oberst" he said. "And you, Inspektor?"
The younger man drew himself up stiffly.
"Since I am commanded," he replied shortly, "I have no choice. I give you my word of honour."
"You are very wise," murmured the chief.
Simon smiled. He opened the door of the cabinet wide and ushered the two men in. As soon as they had settled themselves he closed it again, leaving only a two-inch gap which would give them plenty of air to breathe. He left them with a final warning:
"Remember that you have given your paroles. I shall be back in a few moments. Whatever happens, you will remain hidden."
Then he left the room and went down the stairs again to relieve Monty Hayward's vigil. His arteries were playing an angelic symphony, and there was a new brightness in his eyes. Perhaps after all the running fight could become a triumph. Thus far he had no complaints to make. The gods were spilling Eldorados on him with both hands. If only the breaks held. ... It would be a worthy finish to one story and a merry overture to many more. Admittedly there was a price to pay, and those lost few minutes would have boosted the bill against him to heights that would have made most men giddy to think of, but he had learned that in his chosen way of life there were no bargain sales. It was wine while it lasted. And he had never really wanted to be good.
He came upon Monty Hayward with a swinging step and the Saintly smile still on his lips. The automatic spun on his first finger by the trigger guard.
"I have cleaned up, Monty," he said. "Let's make it a party."
He burrowed through his overalls and produced his own cigarette case. As he opened it, the polished interior showed him a reflection of his own face. He grinned and closed the case again.
"Back along the corridor," he said, "I think I heard the swishing song of a gents' toilet. I should hate Rudy to see us like this—and we can still keep an ear on the charge room from there."
If there was anything which finally emerged as supremely nightmarish out of Monty Hayward's memories of the cumulative palpitations of that day, it was the wash and brush-up which the Saint thereupon ordained. Monty hadn't proposed himself for anything quite so hair-raising as that. Battle, murder, and sudden death were things immutable in themselves; but to make oneself free of the lavatories of a captured police station in which an uncertain number of the personnel were still at large called for a granitic quality of nerve to which only a Simon Templar could have aspired. To the Saint it was a pleasure with a pungent spice. He stripped off his greasy overalls, threw them into a corner, and abandoned himself to the delights of warm water and yellow soap as if he were in his own home. As far as he was concerned, the only visible reminiscence of the things that waited a couple of walls away was the blue-black shape of the automatic pistol placed carefully on the marble top of the wash basin beside him.
Monty sighed and made the best of it. Now that he saw himself in a mirror for the first time, he began to understand how he had been able to travel so far without being identified. It was some relief to be able to divest himself of the stained blue jeans and feel himself in a more accustomed garb; it was even better to be able to scrub the oil and grime from his face and hands and feel clean. He looked up presently with a sort of indefinite optimism—and saw the Saint coolly manicuring his nails.
"Ready for more, Monty?"
The Saint's piratical eyes rested on him humorously. Monty nodded.
"Surely."
They went back towards the office. The two policemen still slept. Simon expected them to be out to the world for all of another ten minutes—the handcuffs and gags were an additional precaution. He knew where he was when the blade of his hand got home with those tricky blows.
He took out his cigarette case again, offered it to Monty, and helped himself. The ratchet of his lighter scraped a flame out of the shielded wick. He stood there for a moment, drawing the mellow smoke gratefully into his lungs to wipe away the last dry harshness of the stuff that he had had to inhale in his former rôle. Monty watched him releasing the smoke again through his lips and nostrils with a slow widening of that newborn Saintly smile. The tanned, rakish contours of that lean face, cleared now from their coating of dust and dirt, were more reckless than he had ever seen them before. The black hair was brushed back in one smooth swashbuckling sweep. No one else in the world could have been so steady-nerved and at ease, so trim and immaculate after the rough handling of his clothes, so alive with the laughing promise of danger, so careless and debonair in every way. The Saint was going to his destiny.
"You take the corridor," he said. "Stand outside the door and listen. Come in as soon as you hear my voice."
"Right."
Monty walked away.
Simon Templar drew at his cigarette again, gazing back the way Monty had gone. He was still smiling.
Then he turned back to the office. He gave it one more glance round to make certain that everything was in order—policemen securely bound, telephone disconnected, windows barred. He went rapidly through the drawers of the desks, taking over a bunch of keys and a couple of spare automatics. Then he went to the door of the charge room.
With his ear pressed to the panels, he could make words out of the murmur that he had heard before. The conversation was in English—he heard Prince Rudolf's silkily faultless accent, commanding the scene as interpreter,
"Would it not be unusual, Miss Holm, if our friend showed no interest in your whereabouts?"
Then Patricia's unfaltering stone-wall:
"I really don't know."
"And yet you insist that he had made no arrangements about meeting you again."
"He isn't a nursemaid."
"But, my dear lady! You must remember that we have met before. I have had my experience of the esteem in which Mr. Templar holds you. Are we to understand that he has transferred his affections elsewhere? I must confess I had heard rumours——"
"As a matter of fact," said Patricia calmly, "we did quarrel."
"Ah! And was it because of another woman?"
"No."
"Will you tell us the reason?"
"Certainly. He said you were a slimy baboon, and I told him I wouldn't have him insulting baboons."
A guttural voice broke in with a rattle of short-tempered German. Prince Rudolf replied soothingly; then he spoke again in English, imperturbably as ever, but with the suave malignity razoring even more clearly through his voice.
"Miss Holm, you will be unwise to attempt to imitate your —er—friend's celebrated gift of repartee. Perhaps you have not yet realized the seriousness of your position. You are charged with being an accessory to three crimes. It would be a pity for you to waste your beauty in prison."
"Is that so?"
"I am instructed to tell you that there are two ways of turning State's Evidence, and only one of them is voluntary—or pleasant. One can be—persuaded."
There was a brief silence; and then another voice entered the discussion with
the confidence of its own personality. It was Nina Walden's.
"Now you're getting interesting, Prince," she remarked. "That'll make a grand story at the trial. It'll be front page stuff. 'Crown Prince Practises Third Degree—Lady Killer In Real Life—Royal Exile Retains Torture Chamber!' Say, wait till I get this all down!"
"Miss Walden, I should advise you——"
"I didn't ask for advice," said the American girl coldly. "I'm here as a reporter. If it's your job to find three men to bully a woman, it's my job to tell the world."
There was another silence.
Then the German officer muttered something vicious and impatient. Simon heard a faint gasp—then the smack of a flat palm and a startled oath.
He turned the handle and kicked open the door.
The figures in that charge-room scene printed themselves on his eyes one by one in a second of unbroken immobility, just as his own image was stamped forever on their memories. They spun round together at the sound of his entry, those of them who had their backs to him, and froze on their feet all at once. His eyes went over them bleakly, like a camera panning round a group set. The sergeant standing by a high desk at the end of the room. The policeman who had brought Patricia in, with her wrist still half twisted in the grasp of one hand, while his other hand moved unbelievingly over the red brand of fingers on his cheek. Nina Walden standing close to him, just as she had been when she hit him. Marcovitch in the background, caught in the middle of his gloating as if he had taken a bullet in the stomach. The Crown Prince, poised with his unfailing grace, with his pale delicate features as reposeful as an alabaster mask, raising his long jade cigarette holer in tapering fingers that were as steady as a statue's. And Patricia Holm staring, with the leap of a bewildered hope coming to her lips. ...
"Good-evening, boys and girls," said the Saint softly.
They gazed at him speechlessly, striving to orient their intelligences to the astounding fact of his presence. And the Saint gave them all the time they needed. He lounged against the jamb of the doorway, smiling at them, circling his gun over them in a gentle arc. He was enjoying his moment. Such instances as that were the sky-signs of his career, the caviare that made all the rest of it worth while. He liked to linger over them, tasting every shade and subtlety of their rare flavour, writing them into the mental memoirs that would shed their light over his declining years—if he lived long enough to decline.
And then Patricia Holm broke the stillness with his name.
"Simon!"
The Saint nodded, looking at her. The conversation that he had heard before he came through the door was still in his mind. He saw the blind happiness in her face, the faith in her eyes, the eager courage of her slim body; and he knew that, whatever happened, whatever the price to be paid, he had taken the very best of life.
"I'm here, lass," he said.
The man who had hold of her roused out of his stupor. He let go the girl's wrist and grabbed for the Luger in his belt . . .
Crack!
Simon's automatic spat from a half-charged cartridge with a sound like two thin planks of wood slapped smartly together, and the Luger banged down to the stone floor. The policeman, with a limp right arm, stared foolishly at a dribble of blood that was running out of his sleeve down the back of his hand.
The Saint glanced aside and saw that Monty had advanced through the other door. Then he faced the group again.
"So long as you all behave yourselves," he murmured, "everything will be hunky dory. Rudolf, I've been looking for you everywhere!"
XII. HOW NINA WALDEN SPOKE, AND MONTY
HAYWARD LOOKED OUT OF A WINDOW
COMPARED with the silence there had been before, the taciturnity that greeted the Saint's affable announcement swelled up to deafening proportions. No one who might by any chance have associated himself with its scope succumbed to any irresistible desire to step forward and offer an illuminated address of welcome in reply. An aura of obstinate bashfulness draped itself over the scene like a pall—suspended from the swinging muzzle of the Saint's gun, and trimmed at its edges with the crimson smudge on the back of the policeman's hand. The sergeant at the desk shamelessly took the lesson of that single shot into his well nourished bosom and allowed it to incubate. He went puce to the end of his nose, and his neck flowed wrathfully over his collar, but he made no movement. Marcovitch tried to sidle away behind him. Even the prince said nothing. And the Saint's blue eyes flitted over them mockingly.
"Pat, you'd better take that Luger and toddle out of the line of fire."
Patricia picked up the fallen gun and came over to him. His left arm slipped around her shoulders, and for a moment he held her close to him. Then he set her quietly aside.
"Marcovitch, you mop that gaffed cod mouth off your face and keep well out in the open. I don't like being able to see you, but I don't feel safe when I can't. Jump to it! . . . Hands up over your head—and keep 'em there till your spine cracks I . . . That's better. Monty, you can go round behind 'em and take their artillery. Pat and I'll take care of any acrobatics they're thinking of."
Monty Hayward dropped his guns into his side pockets and went on the round. Simon looked at the American girl.
"I heard Rudy call you Miss Walden," he said, "and you mentioned being a reporter. Are those details correct?"
Nina Walden understood. He was not implicating her at all. She accepted her cue easily.
"That's right."
"What's the job here?"
"I came in for the story of your mail robbery, Mr. Templar. Maybe you can tell me some more about it."
The Saint swept her a bow.
"Sister, you came in at the right time. You're going out with more thrills than you ever thought you'd get. But I'm afraid this news isn't released yet. You can stay on if you give me your word not to interfere—or do anything else that might bother me."
The girl smiled.
"I guess I haven't much choice."
Simon's left hand saluted her. He had time to play Claude Duval with the most charming reporter he had ever met, but even while he did it he was wondering how much grace the gods were going to give him to gather up the loose ends. His glance transferred itself to the clock over the sergeant's desk. Twenty minutes after seven—and almost dark outside. . . . Yet it never occurred to him to doubt whether the wash and brush-up that bad done so much to enhance his beauty had been a wise expenditure of time. That power of thinking ahead, almost intuitively, into the most distant possibilities, and preparing for them long before they arose, was the gift which had made the grand moguls of the Law gnash their teeth over him for so many years in vain. And that night he might need it all.
The tableau remained mute while Monty passed from one man to the next, making a collection of their weapons. The sergeant was unarmed. Marcovitch yielded an automatic and a long thin-bladed knife. The Crown Prince had a tiny nickel-plated pistol. Simon frowned a little—he was expecting something else. He waited until Monty had retired again to his position with his pockets weighted down by the load of armoury, and then he crooked a coaxing finger.
"Marcovitch—little blossom—come hither! You're too retiring—and we want to know all the secrets of your underwear."
The Russian came forward sullenly. Monty Hayward and Patricia were covering the other men, and the Saint's automatic had suddenly taken entire charge of him. Its round gleaming barrel had slanted up and settled in a dead line with the bridge of his nose, so that he stared down the black tunnel from which sudden death could spurt into his brain at a touch.
"Right here—right up close to papa, sweetheart!"
The Saint's voice rapped at him with a ring that made him start. And Marcovitch came on. He fought every inch of the way, with his lips snarling—but he came on. The single black eye of the gun dragged him inexorably across the room, step by step—that and the living bleak blue eyes behind it.
He stopped in front of the Saint, a yard away; and the blue eyes looked him over s
lowly and thoughtfully.
Then the Saint's left hand flashed out at him. Marcovitch cringed from the blow that he could not avoid. But the mistake was his—the blow never materialized. Simon had done his job before Marcovitch knew what was happening. There was the sharp splitting tear of rending cloth, and one half of Marcovitch's coat hung off him down to the elbow. In another second it was joined by half of his shirt. And the Saint grinned amiably.
"Wool next the skin, Uglyvitch?" he murmured. "Dear me! And I thought you were a tough guy. . . ."
Something else was revealed besides the woollen vest, and that was a band of tape that stretched across the man's chest and disappeared under his armpit. A neat little bundle hung there, tied in a soiled linen handkerchief slung from the tape which passed over the opposite shoulder.
Simon ripped it off. There was another similar bundle concealed under the man's left arm.
"An old game—which you ought to have remembered, Monty," said the Saint. "He might just as well have had a gun there. . . . You can go back to your place in the bread line now, Comrade."
He pushed Marcovitch away. The man's face was white with fury, but Simon Templar could endure hardships like that with singular fortitude. The two knotted handkerchiefs filled his spread hand, and their contents crunched juicily when he squeezed them in his fingers.
He gave the Crown Prince a broadside of his most seraphic smile.
"Dear old Gaffer Rudolf!" he drawled. "So that's the simple end of an awful lot of fuss. Well, well, well! We none of us grow younger, do we?—as we've been telling each other several times to-day."
The prince gazed at him passionlessly.
"Would it be in order to congratulate you?" he murmured; and the Saint laughed.
"Perhaps—when we've finished."
Simon turned to Monty.
"If you'd like something more to do, old dear," he said, "you might try and find some more handcuffs. We shall want six pairs—if the station'll run to it. Hands only for Rudolf and Marcovitch—they've got to walk. Hands and feet for the Law —we don't want them at all. And mind how you go around that sergeant. He looks as if he might burst at any moment, and you wouldn't want to get splashed with his supper."
The Saint's Getaway Page 19
