Saint's Getaway (35 page)

Suddenly he found Monty Hayward beside him,
automatic
raised, taking aim. The Saint caught his wrist and dragged
him away.

“You stay out of it!” he snarled.
“I didn’t take all this trou
ble just for you to get a bullet
through your head, and I didn’t
clear you of one set of charges so that you
could be pinched
for shooting policemen.”

Monty Hayward looked him in the eyes.

“That be damned for a yarn——
”

“And you be damned for a fool. Your job
is to look after
Rudolf. What’re you doing about him?”

“I knocked him out and left him,”
said Monty calmly.

The Saint looked round. He saw the prince
lolling back in his chair with his face turned vacuously to the ceiling—and
also he saw
that the cabinet door was wide open, and the po
lice chief and his
inspector were standing in the room.

“What do you mean—you cleared me?”
said Monty Hay
ward.

Simon turned him round by the shoulders.

“Rudolf’s confession was heard. I
arranged it like that—
that’s why I made him answer me, and got
rather theatrical
in the process. But it worked. You’re clear, Monty—and if
you
do anything silly now those same men will be witnesses
against
you.”

Monty looked at the white-haired police chief
and then back to the Saint. His mouth set in a stubborn line.

“I told you I’d see it through with
you,” he said.

He flung off the Saint’s hand and went back to
the window.
Then he felt the Saint’s gun in his back.

“I mean it, Monty. If you don’t stay out
I’ll plug you. Or
else I’ll lay you out as you laid out Rudolf. Don’t be a
fool!” They eyed each other steadily, while the guns outside thun
dered and
chattered erratically. The regular thudding of the
axe at the front
doors resonated up through the building.
And the Saint’s face
softened. “Monty, it’s been swell having
you. But you’ve done
your share. Leave this to me.”

He swung back to the window with his rifle
coming up to
his shoulder. Again the hysterical rattle of the Luger
battered
through the room, like a sheet of tin jabbed against a
fast-
moving fly-wheel. Simon poured the bullets round the knot of
men
clustered in the doorway, kicking up little spurts of
dust and powdered
stone from the cobbles. The fury of his fire
drove them back for a
moment; then a shot from the barrage that rained through the window struck the
side of his gun,
numbing his hands and hurling him backwards with the impact.
When he tried to bring a fresh cartridge into the cham
ber he found that the
action had jammed.

He threw the useless weapon across the room
and dashed
through the door. Out on the landing the sounds of
thudding and smashing timber were louder, and he knew that the min
utes of the
front door’s resistance were numbered. He took
no notice. In a moment
he was back, hauling a Nordenfeld
machine gun behind him.

“They shall have everything but the
kitchen sink,” he said;
and Monty saw that he was smiling.

Monty stood and watched him drag the heavy gun
to the
window and set it up so that it pointed down at the nearest
squad car.
A full belt of cartridges was clamped through the
slots, and the Saint
jerked at the cocking lever to make sure
of its smooth
running. He fanned a burst along the street; and
then he straightened
up.

“It’s been a great day,”
Monty,” he said.

He glanced round the room.

Prince Rudolf was rousing again, staring as if
hypnotized
at the police chief and the inspector who were gazing down
at
him. The meaning of their presence was writing itself over
his brain
in letters of fire. Then he turned his head and saw
the Saint.

He struggled to his feet. One of the things
that Simon
would always remember was the Crown Prince’s last charm
ing smile,
and the gesture of those eloquent hands.

“After all, my dear young friend,”
said the prince gently,
“you have not disappointed me.”

The Saint looked at him without answering.

Then he turned to the desk and picked up a
flat ebony ruler,
He went with it to the machine gun and rammed it through
the firing
handles, locking down the trigger button, and the
Nordenfeld started a
continuous crackling as the breech
sucked in the long belt of ammunition.

Simon left it and faced Monty again.

“Good luck, old lad,” he said.

The Saint’s hand was out, and the blue eyes
smiled. Monty
Hayward found himself without words, though there were
questions
still teeming in his mind. But he took the Saint’s
hand in a firm grip.

He felt a last strong touch on his
shoulder,
and the Saint
laughed. And then Simon Templar was gone.

Monty Hayward heard him across the landing,
calling to
Patricia. The firing from the other room ceased. Their
foot
steps went down the stairs.

Monty stood where he was. He wondered whether
those
two splendid outlaws were choosing to go out as they had
lived, in a
blaze of their own glory and the stabbing flames of
guns, making one last
desperate bid for freedom. And he
didn’t know. His brain had gone hazy.
He saw the Crown Prince fingering a button on his coat, saw the prince’s hand
go to his
mouth; but still he didn’t move—not even when Nina
Walden cried out, and
the prince sat down quietly like a tired
man… . The door
below was breaking in. He could hear
every blow pounding through the heart
of the seasoned oak,
and the hoarse voices of the men working.
There was less firing outside, but the Nordenfeld with the jammed trigger
still
played the crackling message of the man who had gone,

A long time afterwards—it might have been
centuries, or it
might have been a few seconds—Monty Hayward went to the
window and
stood beside the gun, looking out.

He saw the front doors give way, and the
grey-uniformed
men pouring in. He heard their boots clattering up the
stairs,
heard them pounding on the door of the room where
he was, shouting for
it to be opened. A bullet crashed through
the panels and
flattened itself on the wall a yard to his left. Still he did not move. The
Saint had locked the door as he
went out and taken the key. The police chief
bawled some
thing to that effect, and a dozen shoulders tore the door
from
its hinges.
Policemen filled the room.

Monty knew that the gun at his side gave a
last expiring
cough and went silent; that the room was a babel of
voices;
that Nina Walden was standing beside him and looking out
also; that
men were shaking him, barking their questions in
his ear. He knew all
those things, but they were only vague
impressions in the haze of his memories.

What he saw, and saw clearly, was a figure in
field grey that
came out of the main doors with the limp form of a
fair-haired
girl slung over his shoulder. Monty saw the crowd surge
round them,
heard the uniformed man’s curt explanation
murmured from lip to
lip through the crowd, and made out
the word
“venvundet”
in
it. He saw a passage open up
through the mob, and the girl carried through
on the shoul
der of the grey uniform to the Crown Prince’s Rolls. He
saw
the yellow car begin to move slowly through the milling crowd,
gaining
speed as it won through the densest part, with the
grey uniform at the
wheel and the girl beside him in the front
seat. And he saw, he
would have sworn he saw, that as the yel
low car reached the
open street and whirled away into the
night, the driver raised one hand in
gay debonair wave—even
before another man appeared on the station
steps with a
shout of revelation that was taken up in the furious
rumbling
of a thousand throats.

Still Monty Hayward stood there, not hearing
the impatient
voices round him, not answering them; a free man, living
again the
unforgettable hours of his adventure and seeing all
his life ahead. So he
would go back to his life. And the Saint
would go on. For it
was thus that their paths led them. There
would be a chase, but
the police cars had already been dis
abled. There would be cordons, but the
Saint would slip
through them. There would be armed men at every frontier,
but those two would still get away. He knew they would get
away.