The Saint's Getaway

'I have apologized in advance,' he said briefly. 'Now, Mr. Ingram, will you please tell me your recent movements? One of our men saw you at the Ostbahnhof this morning, besides the one who happened to see you arrive at the hotel. They re­membered you when the descriptions were received; and it was near the Ostbahnhof that the car in which our criminals escaped was found.'

'I think I can explain that,' Monty answered easily. 'I've been walking around the country in this neighbourhood, and last night I ended up at Siegertsbrun. After dinner I had a telegram from my brother asking me to meet him in Munich this morning, and saying it was a matter of life and death. So after thinking it over I caught a very early train and came straight here.'

'Your brother?'

The detective seemed suddenly to have gone out of control. He sat forward as if he could scarcely contain his excitement. And Monty nodded.

'Yes. He's my twin. If you didn't grasp the point of my friend's story, I can tell you that he was being extremely rude.'

'Donnerwetter! And where would he meet you—Ihr Heir Bruder?' 'He said he'd meet me here at ten o'clock; but he hasn't turned up yet——'

'You have this telegram?'

'No—I didn't keep it. But——'

'From where was it despatched?'

'From Jenbach.' Monty's resentment had plainly been boil­ing up against the hungry rattle of questions, and at that point he exploded. 'Damn it, are you suggesting that my brother is a crook?'

The detective hunched his shoulders. An inscrutable hard­ness had crept in under the amiable fleshiness of his face. He retorted with the dehumanized bluntness of official logic.

'It is a matter of probability. You are so much alike. Also this telegram was sent from Jenbach, where the criminals have last been seen. For them it is certainly a matter of life and death.'

In the silence that followed, the waiter returned and set up the drinks which had been ordered. Simon flicked a note onto bis tray and dismissed him with curt gesture. He slid the glasses round in front of the detectives and looked from them to Monty and then back again.

'This is serious,' he said. 'Are you quite sure you haven't made a mistake?'

'That is to be discovered. But it is strange that Mr. Ingram's brother has not yet arrived.'

The reply was unexceptionably polite. And just as incontest­ably it declined to be drawn into abstract argument. It slammed up one stark circumstance, and invited explanations that would convince a jury—nothing less.

Simon took a fresh cigarette from the packet on the table and slouched back in his pew, watching the two detectives like a hawk. There was not an atom of tension in his poise, not one visible quiver of a muscle to flash hints of danger to a sus­picious man, and under the smooth, level brows bis eyelids drooped no more than thoughtfully against the smoke; but behind that droop the eyes were alive with frozen steel. His right arm was crooked lazily round the chair back, but the hand hung less than an inch from his gun pocket.

'It does seem odd,' he drawled.

The keen gaze of the detective who had done all the talk­ing searched his face.

'Were you travelling with Mr. Ingram?' he inquired.

'Yeah.'

The Saint picked up his glass and turned the stem between his fingers. The hand that held it was rock-firm, and he re­turned the chief detective's direct stare without a tremor; and yet his heart was putting in perhaps two extra beats per min­ute above its normal rhythm. He knew to the millionth part of an inch how slender was the thread by which their getaway still hung. The crisis of their bluff was pelting into them with less than a handful of split seconds left to run—and he had known all the time that it was coming. It had been on its way from the first word with all the inevitablity of an inrushing tide. Simon had expected nothing else. He had won the only stakes it had been played for—the fifteen