Simon ran over its smooth surface with an expertly pessimistic eye. The lid fitted down so perfectly that it required the perspicacity of a lynx to spot the join at all. The edge of a razor couldn’t have sidled into that emaciated fissure—much less the claw of the finest jemmy ever made. The only notable break that occurred anywhere in that gleaming case-hardened rhomboid was the small square panel on one side where the combination lock showed narrow segments of its four milled and lettered chrome-steel wheels—and even those were matched and balanced into their aperture so infrangibly that a bacillus on hunger strike would have felt cramped between them.
“Can you open it?” asked Monty, and the Saint shook his head.
“Not with anything in my outfit. The bloke who made this sardine-can knew his job.”
He snapped open one of his valises, and produced a bulging canvas tool-kit which he spread out on the bed. He slid out a small knife-bladed file, tested it speculatively on his thumb, and discarded it. In its place he selected a black vulcanised rubber flask. With a short rod of the same material he carefully deposited a drop of straw-coloured liquid on one of the links of the chain, while Monty watched him curiously.
“Quieter and easier,” explained the Saint, replacing the flask in his holdall. “Hydrofluoric acid—the hungriest liquor known to chemistry. Eats practically anything.”
Monty raised his eyebrows.
“Wouldn’t it eat through the sardine-can?”
“Not in twenty years. They’ve got the measure of these gravies now, where they build their strong-boxes. But the chain didn’t come from the same factory. Which is just as well for us. I can’t help feeling it would have been darned embarrassing to have to wade through life with a strong-box permanently attached to the bargain basement of a morgue. It’s not hygienic.”
He lighted a cigarette and paced the room thoughtfully for a few moments. On one of his rounds he stopped to open the communicating door wide, and stood there listening for a second. Then he went on.
“One or two things are getting clearer,” he said. “As I see it, the key to the whole shemozzle is inside that there sardine-can. The warriors who tried to heave Stanislaus into the river wanted it, and it’s also one of the three possible reasons for the present litter of dead bodies. Stanislaus was bumped, either (a) because he had the can, (b) because he might have made a noise, (c) because he might have squealed—or for a combination of all three reasons. The man who knifed him tried to grab the contents of the attaché case, and was flummoxed by the sardine-can within. Not having with him any means of opening it or separating it from Stanislaus, he returned rapidly to the tall timber. And one detail you can shunt right out of your minds is any idea that the contents of the said can are respectable enough to be mentioned in law-abiding circles anywhere.”
“Bank messengers have been known to carry bags chained to their wrists,” Monty advanced temperately.
“Yeah.” Simon was withering. “At half past two in the morning, the streets are stiff with ’em. Diplomatic messengers have the same habits. They’re recruited from the runts of the earth, and one of their qualifications is to be so nit-witted they don’t know a friend when they see one. When they’re attacked by a howling mob of hoodlums, they never let out a single cry for help—they flop about in the thickest part of the uproar and never try to get saved. Stanislaus must have been an ambassador!”
Monty nodded composedly.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “He must have been a crook.”
The Saint laughed, and turned back to the bed. After one appraising scrutiny of the link on which he had placed his drop of acid, he twisted the chain round his hand and broke it like a piece of string.
With the steel box weighing freely in his hand, he lounged against a chest of drawers, and once again he looked across at Monty Hayward with that mocking half-smile on his lips.
“You hit the mark in one, old lad,” he said softly. “Stanislaus was a crook. And who bumped him off?”
Monty deliberated.
“Well—presumably it was one of the birds we threw into the river. A rival gang.”
Simon shook his head.
“If it was, he dried himself quickly enough. There isn’t one damp spot on the carpet or the bed, except for Stanislaus’s gore. No—we can rule that out. It was a rival gang, all right, but a bunch that we haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting. Their representative was obviously on the set the whole time, unbeknownst, only the Water Babies forestalled him. But who were the Water Babies?”
“Do you know?”
“Yes,” said the Saint quietly. “I think I know.”
Mechanically Patricia Holm took a cigarette from her case and lighted it. She, who knew the Saint better than anyone else living, saw clearly through the deceiving quietness of his voice—straight through to the glinting undercarry of irrepressible mirth that weaved beneath. She caught his eye, and read his secret in it before he spoke.
“They were policemen,” said the Saint.
The words flicked through the room like a whisk of rapturous lightning, leaving the air prickling with suspense. Monty froze up as though his eardrums had been stunned.
“What?” he demanded. “Do you mean—”
“I do.” The Saint was laughing—a wild billow of helpless jubilation that smashed the suspense like dynamite. He flung out his arms shakily. “That’s just it, boys and girls—I do! I mean no more and nothing less. Oh, friends, Romans, countrymen—roll up and sign along the dotted line: the goods have been delivered COD!”
“But are you sure?”
Simon slammed the strong-box on the chest of drawers.
“What else could they have been? Stanislaus never shouted for help because he knew he wouldn’t get it. I thought that was eccentric right from the start, but you can’t hold up a first-class rough-house while you chew the cud over its eccentric features. And then, when Stanislaus gave me the air, I knew I was right. Don’t you remember what he said? ‘Ich will gar nichts sagen’—the conversational gambit of every arrested crook since the beginning of time, literally translated: ‘I’m saying nothing.’ But what a mouthful that was!”
Monty Hayward blinked.
“Are you telling me,” he said, “that all the time I’ve been risking my neck to save some anaemic little squirt from being beaten up by three hairy toughs, and then cheerfully heaving the three toughs into the river—I’ve actually been saving a nasty little crook from being arrested, and helping you to murder three respectable detectives?”
“Monty, old turbot, you have so.” Once more the Saint bowed weakly before the storm. “Oh, sacred thousand Camemberts—stand by and fill your ears with this!…And you started it! You lugged me into the regatta. You led these timid feet into the mire of sin. And here we are, with the police after us, and Stanislaus’s pals after us, and the birds who bumped Stanislaus off after us, and a genuine corpse on the buffet, and an unopenable can of unclaimed boodle on the how’s-your-father—and I was trying to be good!”
Monty put down the glass and rose phlegmatically. He was a man in whom the Saint had never in his life seen any signs of serious flusterment, but just then he seemed as close to the verge of demonstration as he was ever likely to be.
“I never aspired to be an outlaw myself, if it comes to that,” he said. “Simon, I simply loathe your sense of humour.”
The Saint shrugged his shoulders. He was unrepentant.
And already his brain was leaping ahead into a whirlwind of surmise and leaving that involuntary explosion of rejoicing far behind it.
He had summarised for Monty everything that he knew or guessed himself—in a small nutshell. He had divined the situation right from the overture, had been irrevocably confirmed in his suspicion in the first act, and had turned his deductions over and over in his mind during the interval until they had taken to themselves the coherence of concrete knowledge. And in his last sentence he had epitomised the facts with a staccato conciseness that lamed them to
gether like a herd of chortling toads.
They failed lamentably to depress him. Never again would he mourn over his lost virtue. What had to be would be. He had angled for adventure, and it had been handed to him abundantly. Admittedly the violent decease of Stanislaus complicated matters to no small extent, but that only piled on proof that here was the authentic article as advertised. Whoever the gangs were that he was up against, they had already provided prompt and efficient evidence that they were worthy of his steel. His heart warmed towards them. His toes yearned after their posteriors. They were his boy friends.
His brain went racing on towards the next move. The other two were watching him expectantly, and for their benefit he continued with his thoughts aloud.
“If anybody is wanting to get out,” he said, “this is the time to go. The birds who bumped off Stanislaus are going to have lots more to say before they’re through, and it’s only a question of hours before they say it. The guy who did the bumping has gone home to report, and the only thing we don’t know is how long they’ll take to get organised for the come back. Even now—”
He broke off, and stood listening.
In the silence, the gentle drumming on the outer door of the suite, which had commenced as an almost inaudible vibration, rose slowly through a gradual crescendo until they could all hear it quite distinctly, and the Saint’s brows levelled over his eyes in a dark line. Yet he rounded off his speech without a tremor of expression.
“Even now,” said the Saint unemotionally, “it may be too late.”
Monty spoke.
“The police—or Stanislaus’s pals—or the knife experts?”
Simon smiled.
“We shall soon know,” he murmured.
There was a gun gleaming in his hand—a wicked little snub-nosed Webley automatic that fitted snugly and inconspicuously into the palm. He slipped back the jacket and replaced it in his pocket, keeping his hand there, and crossed the room with his swift, swinging stride. And as he reached the door, the knocking stopped.
The Saint halted also, with the furrows deepening in his forehead. Not once since it began had that knocking possessed the timbre which might have been expected from it—either of peremptory summons, or stealthy importunity. It had been more like a long tattoo artistically performed for its own sake, with a sort of patient persistence that lent an eerie quality to its abrupt stoppage. And the Saint was still circling warily round the puzzle when the solution was launched at him with a smooth purposefulness that made his heart skip one beat.
“Please do nothing rash,” said a mellifluous voice in perfect English.
The Saint spun round.
In the communicating doorway of the sitting-room stood a slim and elegant man in evening dress, unarmed except for the gold-mounted ebony cane held lightly in his white-gloved fingers. For three ticked seconds the Saint stared at him in dizzy incredulity, and then, to Monty Hayward’s amazement, he sagged limply against the wall and began to laugh.
“By the great hammer toe of the holy prophet Hezekiah,” said the Saint ecstatically, “the Crown Prince Rudolf!”
2
The prince stroked his silky figment of moustache, and behind his hand the corners of his mouth twitched into the shadow of a smile.
“My dear young friend, this is a most unexpected pleasure! When you were described to me, I could scarcely believe that our acquaintance was to be renewed.”
Simon Templar looked at him through a sort of haze.
His memory went careering back over two years—back to the tense days of battle, murder, and sudden death, when that slight fastidious figure had juggled the fate of Europe in his delicate hands, and the monstrous evil presence of Rayt Marius, the war-maker, had loomed horribly across an unsuspecting world; when the Saint and his two friends had fought their lone forlorn fight for peace, and Norman Kent laid down his life for many people. And then again to their second encounter, three months afterwards, when the hydra had raised its head again in a new guise, and Norman Kent had been remembered…Everything came back to him with a startling and blinding vividness, summed up and crystallised in the superhuman repose of that slim, dominating figure—the man of steel and velvet, as the Saint would always picture him, the stormy petrel of the Balkans, the outlaw of Europe, the man who in his own strange way was the most fanatical patriot of the age, marvellously groomed, sleek as a sword-blade, smiling…
With a conscious effort the Saint pulled himself together. Out of that maelstrom of reminiscence, one thing stood out a couple of miles. If Prince Rudolf was participating in the spree, the soup into which he had dipped his spoon was liable to contain so little poppycock that the taste would be almost imperceptible. Somewhere in the environs of Innsbruck big medicine was being brewed; the theory of ordinary boodle in some shape or form, which the Saint had automatically accepted as the explanation of that natty little strong-box, was wafted away to inglorious annihilation. And somewhere behind that smiling mask of polished ice were locked away the key threads of the intrigue.
“Rudolf—my dear old college chum!” Mirthfully, blissfully, the Saint’s voice went out in an expansive hail of welcome. “This is just like old times!…Monty, you must let me introduce you: this is His Absolute Altitude, the Crown Prince Rudolf himself, who was with us in all the fun and games a year or two ago…Rudolf, meet Saint Montague Hayward, Chairman of the Royal Commission for Investigating the Incidence of Psittacosis among Dromedaries, and Managing Editor of The Blunt Instrument, canonised this very day for assassinating a reader who thought a blackleg was something to do with varicose veins…And now you must let us know what we can do for you—Highness!”
The prince glanced down with faint distaste at the bulge of the Saint’s pocket. Grim, steady as a rock, and unmistakable, it had been covering him unswervingly throughout that gay cascade of nonsense, and not one of the Saint’s exaggerated movements had contrived to veer it off its mark by the thousandth part of an inch.
“I sincerely trust, my dear Mr Templar,” he remarked, “that you are not contemplating any drastic foolishness. One corpse is quite sufficient for any ordinary man to have to account for, and I cannot help thinking that even such an enterprising young man as yourself would find the addition of my own body somewhat inconvenient.”
“You guess wrong,” said the Saint tersely. “Corpses are my speciality. I collect ’em. But still, we’re beginning to learn things about you. From that touching speech of yours, we gather that you belong to the bunch who presented me with the first body. Izzat so?”
The prince inclined his head.
“It distresses me to have to admit that one of my agents was responsible. The killing was stupid and unnecessary. Emilio was only instructed to follow Weissmann and report to me immediately that he had reached his destination. When Weissmann was first arrested, and then rescued and abducted by yourself, the ridiculous Emilio lost his head. His blunder is merely a typical example of misplaced initiative.” The prince dismissed the subject with an airy wave of his hand. “However, the mistake is fortunately not fatal, except for Weissmann—and Emilio will not annoy me again. Is your curiosity satisfied?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it,” said the Saint pungently. “We’re only just starting. Our curiosity hasn’t got its bib wet yet. Who was this Weissmann bird, anyway?”
The prince raised his finely pencilled eyebrows.
“You seem to require a great deal of information, my dear Mr Templar.”
“I soak up information like sponge, old sweetheart. Tell me more. What is the boodle?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Granted. What is the boodle? You know. The jack—the swag—the—loot—the mazuma, the stuff that all this song and dance is about. The sardines in that ingenious little can. Gosh-darn it,” said the Saint, with exasperation, “you used to understand plain English. What’s the first prize in the sweepstake? We’ve paid for our tickets. We’re inquisitive. Let’s hear you tell us what it’s all about
.”
For the merest fraction of a second, a glitter of expression skimmed across the prince’s eyes. And then it was gone again, and his sensitive features were once more as impassive as a Siberian sea.
“You appear,” he said suavely, “to be forgetting your position.”
“You don’t say.”
The prince’s stick swung gracefully from his fingertips.
“You forget, my impetuous young friend, that I am the visitor—and the dictator of the conversation. You are inquisitive, but you may or may not be so ignorant as you wish me to believe. The point is really immaterial. Except that, if you are honestly ignorant, I can assure you—from nothing but my personal regard for you, my dear Mr Templar—I can assure you that it will be healthier for you to remain in ignorance.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we have wasted enough time. Mr Templar, when you abducted Weissmann, he was carrying a small steel box. I see that you have detached it from him. That box, Mr Templar, is my property, and I shall be glad to have it.”
The Saint lounged even more languidly against the wall.
“I’ll bet you’d love it—Highness.”
Simon’s voice was dreamy. And right down behind that drawling dreaminess his brain was sizzling with the knowledge that somewhere the interview had sprung a leak.
In no way whatsoever had it taken the line he had subconsciously expected of it, and not one of his deliberate discourtesies had been able to start it back into the way it should have gone. The Saint felt like a second-rate comedian frantically pumping the old oil into a frosted audience, and feeling all the inclement draughts of Lapland whistling back at him to roost below his wishbone. The badinage was going hideously flat. He caught the prince’s gaze on him with a quiet wraith of humour in it.
The Saint's Getaway (The Saint Series) Page 4
