Saint's arm whipped round his neck, strangling his cry of fear before it could pass his throat. And the man felt the point of the knife prick his chest.
'Put thy rifle down against the wall,' breathed the Saint in his ear. 'If it makes a sound thou wilt not speak again.'
No rifle could ever have been grounded more silently.
The Saint withdrew the knife and picked the man off his feet. In an instant, and without a sound, he had him on the floor, holding him with his legs in a jiu-jitsu lock so that he could not move.
'Be very quiet,' urged the Saint, and let him feel the knife again.
The man lay like one dead. The Saint, his hands now free, twisted the man's arms behind his back and tied them with the sling of his rifle. Then he rolled the man over.
'When you searched me,' he said, 'I had a knife. Where is it?'
'I am wearing it.'
The Saint rolled up the man's sleeve and unstrapped the sheath from his forearm. With loving care he transferred it to his own arm, for he had had Anna for years, and she was the darling of his heart. That little throwing-knife, which he could wield so expertly, had accompanied him through countless adventures, and had saved his life many times. He loved it like a child, and the loss of it would have left him inconsolable.
With Anna back in her place, the Saint felt more like him self-though it is doubtful if anyone could have been found to agree with him, for he could never in his life have looked so dirty and disreputable as he was then. He, Simon Templar, the Saint, the man who was known for his invariable elegance and his almost supernatural power of remaining immaculate and faultlessly groomed even in the most hectic rough-house and the most uncivilized parts of the world, had neither washed nor shaved for nearly four days. There was no provision for these luxuries in the prison of Santa Miranda. And his clothes had been dreadful enough when Kelly had borrowed them off his under- gardener for the purpose; now, after having been lived in day and night on the stone pile and in the filthy cell which they had just left, their condition may be imagined. . . .
His greatest wish at that moment was to get near some soap and water; and already the time of grace for such a diversion was getting short. The square of light on the cell wall told him that he had barely half an hour at his disposal before Santa Miranda would be rousing itself for the second installment of its day's work; and the other warders would soon be lurching down, yawning and cursing, to drive the prisoners back to their toil. It was time for the Saint to be moving.
He unfastened the jailer's belt and used it to-secure the man's legs; then he rolled him over and stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth for a gag. He straightened up, hands on hips; and the helpless man glared up at him with bulging eyes.
'But I had forgotten!' cried the Saint, under his breath, and stooped again to take his money from the jailer's pocket. The man squirmed, and the Saint swept him a mocking bow.
'Remain with God, my little ape,' he murmured. 'There will now be nothing to disturb thy meditations.'
Then he was gone.
He ran lightly down the corridor and out at the end into the blazing sunlight of the prison courtyard. This he crossed swiftly, slowing up and moving a little more cautiously as he neared the gates. Within the courtyard beside the gates was a little sentry box where the gatekeeper might take shelter from the sun.
The Saint stole up the last few yards on tiptoe, and sidled one eye round the doorway of the box.
The gatekeeper sat inside on a packing case, his back propped against the wall. His rifle was leaning against the wall in one corner. He was awake, but his eyes were intent on a pattern which he was tracing in the dust with the tow of his boot.
The bare prison walls were too high to scale, and the only way out was by way of the gates.
The Saint's shadow suddenly blocked the light from the sentry box, and the gatekeeper half rose to his feet with a shout rising to his lips. It was rather like shooting a sitting rabbit, but the issues involved were too great to allow of making a more sporting fight of it. As the warder's head came up the Saint hit him on the point of the jaw scientifically and with vim, and the shout died stillborn.
The Saint huddled the man back against the wall and tipped his sombrero over his eyes as if he were asleep-which, in fact, he was. Then he scrambled over the gates, and dropped cat-footed into the dust of the cart track of a road outside.
The prison of Santa Miranda lies to the east of the town, near the sea, among the slums which closely beset the bright main streets; and the Saint set himself to pass quickly through the town by way of these dirty, narrow streets where his disreputable condition would be most unnoticed, avoiding the Calle del Palacio and the chance of encountering a guardia who might remember him.
Santa Miranda had not yet awoken. In the grass-grown lanes between the rude huts of the labourers a child in rags played here and there, but paid no attention to his passing. In the doorway of one hut an old and wizened Indian slept in the sun, like a lizard. The Saint saw no one else.
He threaded the maze quietly but with speed, steering a course parallel to the Calle del Palacio. And then, over the low roofs of the adobe hovels around him, he saw, quite close, a tall white tower caught by the slanting rays of the sun, and he changed his plans.
That is to say, he resolved on the spur of the moment to dispense with making plans. His original vague idea had been to make for Kelly's bungalow, get a shave, a bath, some clean clothes, and a cigarette, and sit down to deliberate the best way of capturing the town. So far, in spite of his boast, the solution of that problem had eluded him, though he had no doubts that he would be given inspiration at the appointed time.
Now, looking at that tower, which he knew to be an ornament of the Presidential Palace, only a stone's throw away, the required inspiration came; and he acted upon it at once, branching off to his left in the direction of the tower.
It was one of those gay and reckless, daredevil and fool hardy, utterly preposterous and wholly delightful impulses which the Saint could never resist. The breath-taking impudence of it was, to his way of thinking, the chief reason for taking it seriously; the suicidal odds against success were a conclusive argument for having a fling at bringing off the lone hundred-to-one chance; the monumental nerve that was plainly needed for turning the entertaining idea into a solemn fact was a challenge to his adventurousness that it was simply unthinkable to ignore. The Saint took up the gauntlet without the faintest hesitation.
For this was the full effrontery of his decision: 'Eventually,' whispered the Saint, to his secret soul-'why not now?'
And the Saintly smile in all its glory twitched his lips back from his white teeth. ...
His luck had been stupendous, and it augured well for the future. Decidedly it was his day. A clean get-away from the prison, with no alarm. And he reached the high wall surrounding the palace grounds unobserved. And only a dozen feet away from the walls grew a tall tree.
The Saint went up the tree like a monkey, to a big straight branch that stuck out horizontally fifteen feet from the ground. Measuring the distance, he jumped.
The leap took him onto the top of the wall. He steadied himself for a moment, and then jumped again, twelve feet down into the palace gardens.
He landed on his toes, as lightly as a panther, and went zigzagging over the lawn between the flower beds like a Red Indian. The gardens were empty. There was no sound but the murmuring of bees in the sun and the soft rustle of the Saint's feet over the grass.
He ran across the deserted gardens and up some steps to a flagged terrace in the very shadow of the palace walls. Eight feet above the terrace hung a low balcony. The Saint took two steps and a jump, hung by his fingertips for a second, and pulled himself quickly up and over the balustrade.
An open door faced him, and the room beyond was empty. The Saint walked in, and passed through to the corridor on the other side.
Here he was at a loss, for the geography of the palace was strange to him. He crept along, rather hesitantly, without a sound. In the space of a dozen yards there was another open door. Through it, as he passed, the Saint caught a glimpse of the room beyond, and what he saw brought him to a sudden standstill.
He tiptoed back to the doorway and stood there at gaze.
It was a bathroom.
Only a year ago that bathroom had been fitted up at enormous cost for the delectation of the Saturday nights of his excellency the President and the Minister of the Interior. A gang of workmen specially sent down by a
