Saint's Getaway (32 page)

“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 trans
ferred 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 turn
ing 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 ala
baster 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 intel
ligences 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 in
stances 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 de
cline.

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 taci
turnity
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 mock
ingly.

“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 pre
paring 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 some
thing else. He waited
until Monty had retired again to his po
sition 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 retir
ing—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
auto
matic 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 slowly 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.