Saint's Getaway (34 page)

“Your punishment is not in my
hands,” said the Saint. “It
will overtake you in the course of legal justice, and I see
no
need to interfere.”

He ran his fingers again through the heap of
jewels, letting them trickle through his fingers in rivulets of coloured splen
dour that
caught the light on a hundred cunning facets.

“Pretty toys,” said the Saint,
“but they tempted you. And
you could have bought them. You could have
had them all
for no more trouble than it would have taken you to
write a
cheque. I shall often wonder why you did it. Was it a kink
of yours,
Rudolf, that told you you couldn’t enjoy them un
less they were
christened in blood? The Maloresco emeralds—the Ullsteinbach blue diamond——
”

“What did you say?”

It was Nina Walden who spoke, starting
forward suddenly
from her place in the background.

Simon looked at her curiously. He picked up
the great blue
stone and held it in the light.

“The Ullsteinbach blue diamond,” he
said. “Wedding gift
of the late Franz Josef to the Archduke
Michel of Presc—ac
cording to information in
The Times.
Josef Krauss
tried to tell
me something about it before he died, but he didn’t get
far.
Do you know anything about it?”

The American girl took the stone from his
fingers and
turned it over and over. Then she looked at the Saint
again.

“I know this much,” she said.
“It’s a——
”

“Look out!” yelled Monty.

He had seen the prince’s hand move casually to his sleeve,
as if in search of a handkerchief, and had thought
nothing of
it. Then the hand came out
again with a jerk, and the knife
that
came with it went spinning across the desk in a vicious
streak of
silver. The Saint hurled himself sideways, and it
skimmed past his neck and clattered against the wall. The prince flung
himself after it like a madman, clawing at the
Saint’s gun.

Simon stood up and met him with a straight
left that
smashed blood out of the contorted face and set the man
stag
gering back against his chair.

“Keep your gun in his ribs, Monty,”
ordered the Saint
crisply. “This is getting interesting. What were you
going to
tell me,
Miss Walden?”

The girl gave him back the stone.

“It’s a piece of coloured glass,” she said.

2

Simon Templar subsided on to the desk as if
his legs had
given out under him. The room danced round him in a
drunken
tango. And once again he heard the dying jest of
Josef Krauss ringing
in his ears:
“Sehen Sie gut nach …
dem blauen Diamant… . Er ist . … wirklich … preis
los… .”
And the
bitter derisive eyes of the man… .

“The Ullsteinbach diamond is in
America.” Nina Walden
went on speaking without a glance at the
prince. “It was
sold to Wilbur G. Tully, the straw hat
millionaire, just before
the war. The owners were hard up, and they had
to raise
money somehow: their treasurers wouldn’t give them any
more, so
they raided the crown jewels. This imitation was
made, and the real
stone was sold to Tully under a vow of
secrecy. He keeps it
in his private collection. I don’t think any
living person knows
the story besides Tully and myself. But my grandfather made the imitation. I’ve
known about it for
years, and I’ve been saving the scoop for a good occasion.
The
Archduke Michel did that when he was sowing wild oats in
his
fifties—
and he’s Prince Rudolf’s father, at present the King
of——”

“Great God in Heaven!”

The Saint leapt up again. He understood. The
mystery was
solved in a flash that almost blinded him. He cursed
himself for not having thought of it before. And he was half laughing
at the
same time, shaking with the sublime perfection of the
truth.

“Let me get this straight!” he
gasped. “It wasn’t the other
crown jewels that Rudolf gave a damn
about. They just hap
pened to be among the spoils. What he wanted
was the Ull
steinbach blue diamond. And he didn’t want it because it
was
valuable, but because it wasn’t—because it was literally
priceless!
He couldn’t let the jewels come into any ordinary
market, because
someone would certainly have discovered the
fraud, and the whole
deception would have been shown up
from the beginning. The old Archduke
would probably have
been booted off the throne, and Rudolf would have gone
with
him. He had to let Josef Krauss pinch the jewels, and then
take them
off Josef. Josef had discovered the secret when he
handled the stones, so
he had to go. And then I got hold of
them by a fluke, and I might have
discovered it—so I was a
marked man. And everyone with me was in the
same boat.
Hell!
…”

The Saint flung out his arms.

“I said it wasn’t ordinary boodle—and it
isn’t! It’s the most
priceless collection of boodle that’s ever
been knocked off! There were men dying and being tortured for it—mail vans
broken—policemen
sweating—thrones tottering—and all be
cause the star turn of it wasn’t worth
more than an empty
beer bottle! My God—why didn’t I know that joke hours ago?
Why wasn’t I told till now?”

He hugged Nina Walden weakly.

Monty swallowed. He didn’t know what to say.
He realized
dimly that he had just heard the unravelling of the most
amaz
ing story he was ever likely to hear, but it was all too crushingly
simple.
For the moment his brain refused to absorb
the elementary
enormity of it.

In the same daze he saw Simon Templar pick up
the glit
tering blue crystal from the carpet where he had dropped
it
and advance solemnly towards the Crown Prince. And the
Saint’s voice spoke
uncertainly.

“Rudolf—my cherub—you may have it as the
souvenir I
promised
you.”

Monty saw the prince’s livid face… .

And then a new sound broke into the
room—faint and dis
tant at first, swelling gradually until it seemed to
pierce the
eardrums like a rusty needle. The Saint stiffened up and
stood
still. And he heard it again—the mournful rising and falling wail of a
police siren. It shrilled into his brain eerily, mount
ing up to its climax
like the shriek of a lost soul, moaning
round the room at its
height like the scream of a tormented ghost. It was so clear that it might have
been actually under
his feet.

Simon sprang to the window and flung it up.
Down in the
street below he saw two squad cars pulling in to the curb,
spilling their loads of uniformed men. Among them, under a
street
lamp, he could recognize the officer whom he had mis
directed on the road.
The pursuit squadron had come home.

The Saint turned and faced the room. In his
heart he had
expected
no less. He was quite calm.

“Will you hold the fort again,
Monty?” he said.

He ran quickly down the stairs and the
corridor leading
to the vestibule. As he came out of the corridor he saw
the of
ficer mounting the steps. For an instant they stared at each
other across the doorway.

Then Simon slammed the great doors in the
officer’s face,
and dropped the bar across them.

He heard a muffled shout from outside, and
then the
thumping of fists and gun butts on the massive woodwork;
but he was
dashing into the nearest room with a window on
the street. He looked
out and saw a third squad car driving
up; then a bullet slapped through the
glass beside him and combed his hair with flying splinters. He ducked, and grappled
with the heavy steel shuttering that was rolled away on
one side of
the window. He unfolded it and slammed it into
place, and went to the
next window. A hail of shots wiped
the glass out of existence as he
reached it, but the next volley
spattered against the plates of armour steel.
He had been
right about that police station—it was built like a
fortress.
Simon sprinted from room to room like a demon,
barricading
one window after another until the whole of the ground
floor
on the street side was as solid as the walls in which the win
dows were
set.

Then he went through to the back of the
building. A section of armed men detached from the main body nearly forestalled
him there: there was a back door opening onto a small square
courtyard,
and one of them had his foot over the threshold
when the Saint came
to it. Simon swerved round the levelled
Luger: the shot singed
his arm before he thrust the man backwards and banged the door after him.

The other windows at the back were barred,
and Simon
could tell at a glance that the bars would withstand any
as
sault for at least half an hour. A face loomed up in one of the
windows
while the Saint was making his reconnaissance, and
he was barely in time
to throw himself to the floor before the
man’s automatic was
spitting lead at him like a machine gun.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Simon lay flat on his belly and watched the
bullets stringing
a ruled line of pock-marks along the plaster of the wall
over his head. He crawled out on his stomach and went upstairs
again, and
when he reached the police chief’s office he had a Luger automatic rifle under
each arm.

He pushed one of them into Patricia’s hands.

“Over the landing, and take any of the
rooms opposite.
Some of ‘em are trying to break in at the back. Keep
“em away
from the door. Don’t hit anyone if you can help it—and
don’t
get hit
yourself!”

He flung himself across to the window which
he had opened
before. Some of the policemen were keeping back the crowd
of civilians who had materialized from nowhere; others
were
standing in groups watching the police station, and the
Saint’s
appearance was the signal for a scattered fusillade.
Another man was
running across the street with an axe.

Bullets chipped the window frame and scraped
showers of
plaster from the ceiling as the Saint took aim. He dropped
the man with the axe with a flesh wound in the fleshy part of
his leg;
another man picked up the axe and rushed for the
main doors. Simon
spread a curtain of clattering steel along
the cobbles in front
of the man’s feet and checked the rush.
It was certain suicide
to take a step further into that rain of
spattering death. The
officer shouted a command, and the
man ran back with the Saint slamming
bullets round his feet.

The police retired behind the shelter of their
cars, and
paused. Simon saw the peak of the officer’s cap rise up,
and
sent it flying with a well aimed shot. The man sank down
again, and
Simon proceeded methodically to plug the tires of
the police cars. A
couple of volunteers were carrying the
wounded man away, and
the Saint let them get on with it.

A lull descended on the street side of the
battle, and through it Simon heard Patricia’s rifle across the landing spitting
its
syncopated stutter of defiance. He waited, ramming a fresh
feeder of
ammunition into the clips.

Then another order rang out, and the police
leapt up as one
man in a second and better organized attack.

One squad charged for the door, headed by the
man with
the axe. The others covered their advance with a storm of
fire
that went whistling round the Saint’s head like a cloud of an
gry
hornets. Simon made his Luger belch lead till the barrel
scalded
his hands. It was a miracle that he was not hit himself, while he sprayed
shots along the armour of the police
cars and sent volleys of ricochets
whining away off the cobble
stones. One shot clipped his ear and drew
blood: he shook his
head and crowded a new box of cartridges onto the Luger’s
hungry
breech.