'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 wisk 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 C. O. D.!'
'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?
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 his glass and rose phlegmatically. He was a man in whom the Saint had never in his life seen any signs of serious flustennent, but just then he seemed as dose 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 summarized 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 epitomized the facts with a staccato conciseness that lammed them together 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,'
