The Saint's Getaway

as the Saint had ever seen. It was not really funny—it was perhaps the most ominous possible reminder of the dour realities that had been glossed over so smoothly with the sheen of airy badinage—but it was only the fantastic bathos of the whole performance which appealed to him.

'Oh, go down, Moses!' he hallooed. 'That's the stuff to give 'em. Stamp on the gas, Adolphus—don't let him get away! Yoicks!'

He restrained himself with difficulty from thumping the roof in his excitement, and turned his mind to the amazing awakening of Monty Hayward.

Monty had acquitted himself like an old stager, but the breaks had been against him. In spite of everything he had done, a malicious fluke had dented the polish of their alibi. Their reputations were tarnished beyond repair. The thwarted spleen of the entire Austrian police force would be thrown into the international ill will that trailed behind them. The righteous wrath of one more country would be thirsting for their blood. . . . And strangely enough the Saint laughed again.

He took the time from his watch and made a rapid mental calculation. If Monty had wasted no unnecessary minutes, he should be less than a quarter of an hour behind them—so long as the car he had chosen hadn't elected to break down. Given luck and a warm engine, he might be even closer than that; and it was essential for the Saint to be waiting for him when he caught up. Simon looked at the road on either side hurtling beneath him at sixty miles an hour, and decided against any attempt to step quietly off and send the prince his compli­ments by post. But he glimpsed a milestone skimming by which indicated only two kilometers more to Jenbach; and he realized that, much as he was still enjoying his little joke, the time had come to share its beauties with the prince.

He drew the gun from his pocket, wriggled to the edge of the roof, and took leisurely aim at the centre of the near-side rear mudguard. The rap of his gun was drowned in the explo­sive flattening of the tire, and the car listed over and lost speed bumpily.

Simon dropped lightly off behind it just before it stopped. He coiled himself down in the shadow of the hedge two yards away, and watched the chauffeur run round and peer at the pancaked wheel. The chauffeur felt it and prodded it, and went back to describe its devastating flatness to the prince. The prince climbed out. He also peered at the wheel and prodded it. It was indubitably flat.

'It must have been a nail in the road, Hoheit,' said the chauffeur.

The prince stood absolutely still, looking down the road along the bright beam of the headlights. For a time he made no answer. It was in that time that a lesser man would have been fuming and cursing impotently, but the prince might have been a man carved in stone. There was something terrify­ing in his inhuman immobility.

When he spoke, his voice was perfectly level—as level and measured a flow of molten lava.

'Change the wheel.'

The words fell through the air like glistening globules of acid; and then the Saint judged that a few lines of cheery chat­ter might relieve the tenseness of the dialogue.

He stepped out into the dim glow of the tail light, with his automatic ostentatiously displayed, and cleared his throat.

The two men by the car whirled round as if they had been stabbed with electric needles. And the Saint smiled his most winning smile.

'Dear me!' he murmured. 'Isn't it odd how we keep run­ning up against each other? You know, if we go on like this, you'll begin to think I'm following you about.'

Slowly the prince relaxed. For the moment even his tem­pered nerves must have been shaken by the uncanny prompt­ness of the Saint's return. But even while he relaxed, his face remained set in a stony mask in which only the eyes seemed alive.

'I cannot think how we missed you, my dear Mr. Templar,' he said quietly. 'Has your car also met with an accident?'

'My car is yours,' said the Saint lavishly. He grinned gently at the prince's moveless puzzlement. 'To tell you the truth, old dear, it always was. And while we're on the subject, in case you should be thinking of giving me a lift some other time, I wish you'd have something done about that roof. A couple of good strong coffin-handles would make a heap of difference; and if you had enough money left after that to stand me an air-cushion——'

'So!' There was a gleam like the lustre of white-hot metal in the prince's narrowed eyes, and the same lustrous malig­nity in his soft utterance of that trenchant syllable.