The Saint's Getaway

he said, 'this is the time to go. The birds who bumped off Stanislaus are going to have lots more to say before they're through, and it's only a question of hours before they say it. The guy who did the bumping has gone home to report, and the only thing we don't know is how long they'll take to get organized for the come-back. Even now——'

He broke off and stood listening.

In the silence, the gentle drumming on the outer door of the suite, which had commenced as an almost inaudible vi­bration, rose slowly through a gradual crescendo until they could all hear it quite distinctly; and the Saint's brows levelled over his eyes in a dark line. Yet he rounded off his speech with­out a tremor of expression.

'Even now,' said the Saint unemotionally, 'it may be too late.'

Monty spoke.

'The police—or Stanislaus's pals—or the knife experts?'

Simon smiled.

'We shall soon know,' he murmured.

There was a gun gleaming in his hand—a wicked little snub-nosed Webley automatic that fitted snugly and inconspicuously into the palm. He slipped back the jacket and replaced it in his pocket, keeping his hand there, and crossed the room with his swift, swinging stride. And as he reached the door, the knocking stopped.

The Saint halted also, with the furrows deepening in his forehead. Not once since it began had that knocking possessed the timbre which might have been expected from it—either of peremptory summons or stealthy importunity. It had been more like a long tattoo artistically performed for its own sake, with a sort of patient persistence that lent an eerie quality to its abrupt stoppage. And the Saint was still circling warily round the puzzle when the solution was launched at him with a smooth purposefulness that made his heart skip one beat.

'Please do nothing rash,' said a mellifluous voice in perfect English.

The Saint spun round.

In the communicating doorway of the sitting room stood a slim and elegant man in evening dress, unarmed except for the gold-mounted ebony cane held lightly in his white-gloved fingers. For three ticked seconds the Saint stared at him in dizzy incredulity; and then, to Monty Hayward's amazement, he sagged limply against the wall and began to laugh.

'By the great hammer toe of the holy prophet Hezekiah,' said the Saint ecstatically—'the Crown Prince Rudolf !'

2

The prince stroked his silky figment of moustache, and be­hind his hand the corners of his mouth twitched into the shadow of a smile.

'My dear young friend, this is a most unexpected pleasure! When you were described to me, I could scarcely believe that our acquaintance was to be renewed.'

Simon Templar looked at him through a sort of haze.

His memory went careering back over two years—back to the tense days of battle, murder, and sudden death, when that slight, fastidious figure had juggled the fate of Europe in his delicate hands, and the monstrous evil presence of Rayt Marius, the war maker, had loomed horribly across an unsuspecting world; when the Saint and his two friends had fought their lone forlorn fight for peace, and Norman Kent laid down his life for many people. And then again to their second encounter, three months afterwards, when the hydra had raised its head again in a new guise, and Norman Kent had been re­membered. . . . Everything came back to him with a startling and blinding vividness, summed up and crystallized in the superhuman repose of that slim, dominating figure—the man of steel and velvet, as the Saint would always picture him, the stormy petrel of the Balkans, the outlaw of Europe, the man who in his own strange way was the most fanatical patriot of the age; marvellously groomed, sleek as a sword-blade, smil­ing. ...

With a conscious effort the Saint pulled himself together. Out of that maelstrom of reminiscence, one thing stood out a couple of miles. If Prince Rudolf was participating in the spree, the soup into which he had dipped his spoon was liable to contain so little poppycock that the taste would be almost imperceptible. Somewhere in the environs of Innsbruck big medicine was being brewed; the theory of ordinary boodle in some shape or form, which the Saint had automatically ac­cepted as the explanation of that natty little strong-box, was wafted away to inglorious annihilation. And somewhere be­hind that smiling mask of polished ice were locked away the key threads of the intrigue.

'Rudolf—my dear old college chum!' Mirthfully, blissfully, the Saint's voice went out in an expansive hail of welcome. 'This is just like old times! . . . Monty, you must