The Saint's Getaway

the harmless-looking little man who was now the focal point of the excitement had been the only specimen of humanity in sight. The deserted calm of the Herzog Otto Strasse ahead had been equalled only by the vacuous repose of the Rennweg behind, or the void tranquillity of the Hofgarten on the port side; and the harmless-looking little man was paddling innocently across the bridge on their right front with his innocuous little attache case in his hand. And then, all at once, without the slightest warning or interval for parley, the three other combatants had materialized out of the shadows and launched themselves in a flying wedge upon him. Largely, solidly, and purposefully, they jammed him up against the par­apet and proceeded to slug the life out of him.

The Saint's weight shifted gently on his toes, and he whistled a vague, soft sort of tune between his teeth. And then Monty Hayward detached his arm from the Saint's light grip, and the eyes of the two men met.

'I don't know,' said Monty tentatively, 'whether we can stand for this.'

And Simon Templar nodded.

'I also,' he murmured, 'had my doubts.'

He hitched himself thoughtfully forward. Over on the bridge, the chaotic welter of men heaved and writhed convul­sively to a syncopated accompaniment of laboured breathing and irregularly thudding blows, varied from time to time by a guttural gasp of effort or a muffled yelp of pain. . . . And the Saint became dimly conscious that Patricia was holding his arm.

'Boy, listen—weren't you going to be good?'

He paused in his stride and turned. He smiled dreamily upon her. In his ears the scuffling undertones of the battle were ringing like celestial music. He was lost.

'Why—yes, old dear,' he answered vaguely. 'Sure, I'm go­ing to be good. I just want to sort of look things over. See they don't get too rough.' The idea took firmer shape in his mind. 'I—I might argue gently with them, or something like that.'

Certainly he was being good. His mind was as barren of all evil as a new-born babe's. Gentle but firm remonstrance—that was the scheme. Appeal to the nobler instincts. The coal-black mammy touch.

He approached the battle thoughtfully and circumspectly, like an entomologist scraping acquaintance with a new species of scorpion. Monty Hayward seemed to have disappeared com­pletely into the deeper intestines of the potpourri, into which his advent had enthused a new and even more violent tempo. In that murderous jumble it was practically impossible to dis­tinguish one party from another; but Simon reached down a thoughtfully probing hand into the tangle, felt the scruff of a thick neck, and yanked forth a man. For one soul-shaking in­stant they glared at each other in the dim light; and it became regrettably obvious to the Saint that the face he was regarding must have been without exception the most depraved and vil­lainous specimen of its kind south of Munich. And therefore, with what he would always hold to be the most profound and irrefragably philosophic justification in the world, he hit it, thoughtfully and experimentally, upon the nose.

It was from that moment, probably, that the ruin of all his resolutions could be dated.

Psychologists, from whom no secrets are hidden, tell us that certain stimuli may possess such ancient and ineradicable asso­ciations that the reactions which they arouse are as automatic and inevitable as the yap of a trampled Peke. A bugle sounds, and the old war horse snorts with yearning. A gramophone record is played, and the septuagenarian burbles wheezily of an old love. A cork pops, and the mouths of the thirsty water. Such is life.

And even so did it happen to the Saint.

After all, he had done nothing desperately exciting for a long time. About twenty-one days. His subconscious was just ripe for the caressing touch of a few seductive stumuli. And then and there, when his resistance was at its lowest ebb, he heard and felt the juicy plonk of his fist sinking home into a nose.

The savour of that fruity squish wormed itself wheedlingly down into the very cockles of his heart. He liked it. It stirred the deepest chords of his being. And it dawned persuasively upon him that at that moment he desired nothing more of life than an immediate repetition of that feeling. And, seeing the nose once more conveniently poised in front of him, he hit it again.

He had not been mistaken. His subconscious knew its stuff. With the feel of that second biff a pleasant kind of glow cen­tred itself in the pit of his stomach and tingled electrically outwards along his limbs, and the remainder of his doubts melted away before its spreading warmth. He was punching the nose of an ugly man, and he was liking it. Life had no more to offer.

The ugly man went sprawling back across the bridge. Then he came in again with his arms flailing, and the Saint