The Saint's Getaway

Meanwhile, fully three quarters of his own talents were taken up with the business of maintaining his present strate­gic position. At the first trial, the roof of the car had seemed most conveniently proportioned to enable him to curl his toes over the rear corners and his fingers over the front ones, thereby stabilizing his equilibrium over a wide base; but after the first five minutes he discovered that his position was unpleasantly reminiscent of the lunch hour in a mediaeval torture chamber. If he had been able to talk, he would have aired his heartfelt sympathy with the venerable sportsmen who allowed their heights to be increased on the six-inches-while-you-wait machine, while the jailers went round the corner to get gay with a butt of mulled sack. The car dodged and bucked round every available corner, heading eastwards out of the town onto the Salzburg road; and at every corner he had to exert all his strength to avoid being flung into the scenery like a pea off a gyroscope. Even when they were clear of the town he was no better off; for the Inn Valley road, for its own mys­terious reasons, switches over a series of bridges from one side of the river to the other at every conceivable opportunity and a few others which only an engineering genius could have in­vented. Moreover, it is covered to a depth of three inches with a layer of fine white dust; and as the car increased its speed the Saint found himself enveloped in a whirling cloud of pul­verized rock which invaded his nostrils and turned the lining of his throat into a lime kiln—a form of frightfulness which the mediaeval connoisseurs had omitted to include in their syl­labus of entertainment. The Saint clung on like a limpet, breathing through his ears, and dreaming wistfully of feather beds and beer.

After a while he began to get adjusted to the peculiar re­quirements of his position—for what that was worth. At least, he felt sufficiently secure to try and take a peek at what there was to be seen in the de luxe quarters of the vehicle. Locating a merciful straight stretch of road in front of them, he let go one hand and squirmed himself gingerly round to shoot one eyes through the miniature skylight under his belt buckle.

At the four corners of the rear compartment, clusters of tiny frosted bulbs illuminated the interior. By their light Si­mon could see the prince reclining in the sybaritic upholstery with the portable safe balanced on his knee. He was idly twiddling the wheels of the combination, and a tranquil smile was gliding over his face. Presently he put the strong-box down on the cushions beside him and rested his chin on his hand, wrapped in inscrutable contemplation.

The Saint grabbed for a hold and flattened himself out again in time to take the next corner. And he also meditated.

The view he had had of the tableau under his tummy was definitely encouraging. Pondering it between the racking strains on his muscles, he elaborated it into a direct and diag­nostic confirmation of his theory. The facts as he knew them so far had to link up somehow, and the Saint felt that he could do the linking. That was why he was suffering his present martyrdom.

He tacked the dues concisely together in his mind.

'Emilio was tailing Stanislaus to report when he made the home base. When I collared Stanislaus, Emilio didn't try to rescue him; he knifed him instead. After which, Rudolf tools and lifts the sardine can. Simple.'

The big car sped on; and time became nothing but a mean­ingless succession of aches. They passed through a jolly-sound­ing place called Pill, swung right at Schwaz, and began to climb into the mountains. Shortly afterwards, the so-called 'first-class' road petered out, and they were jolting over a kind of glorified mule track which boxed the compass along the brink of a contorted precipice. The chauffeur, whose nervous system must have been nothing more than an elementary ap­paratus rigged up from a few assorted icicles and bits of string, kept his foot hard down on the accelerator and took the hair­pin corners on two wheels; and after the first mile of it the Saint buried his face in his sleeve and lost interest in the route. Every few minutes he felt the car heel drunkenly over to one side or the other, while the tires skidded horribly over the loose, treacherous surface; and the Saint felt the flesh crawling on the back of his neck and wondered if any art of surgery would ever induce his bones to settle back into their tortured sockets.

Eventually, with a terrific bump which the Saint at first as­sumed to be the inevitable end, the car crabbed onto a com­paratively level driveway and began to slow down.

Simon raised his head with the feelings of a drowning man who finds himself unexpectedly coming up for the fourth time, and endeavoured to absorb the salient features of the landscape.

Straight in front of him he could see a pitch-black pile rear­ing up its serrated battlements out of the shrouded dark. The headlamps of the car splashed a wide oval of light over the bleak stone entrance flanked by semicircular bastions, and picked out the gaunt figure of the janitor, who was at that mo­ment hurrying to open the huge wrought-iron gates. To left and right of the archway the forbidding walls of the castle stretched sheer and unbroken to the squat round towers at the corners fifty yards away.