The Saint's Getaway

'That was an unfortunate necessity. You had to be found without delay, and the police have facilities which are denied to ordinary people like ourselves.'

The Saint smiled.

'I see. While you hang around in the offing as the righteous citizen what's been robbed. Well, well, Rudolf,' said the Saint tolerantly, 'the notion was passably sound, though I won't say I hadn't heard of it before. And what would you have done if I'd actually been collared with the boodle—gone home and burst into tears?'

'That possibility had been considered,' admitted the prince calmly. 'In fact, I had anticipated it. You may have forgotten     that my name carries some weight in this country. I do not think I should have found my task difficult.' He shrugged. 'But you were always enterprising, my dear Mr. Templar.'

'That past tense makes me feel all Tolstoy,' said the Saint plaintively.

The prince fingered his moustache.

'You are the unknown quantity which is always disconcert­ing,' he said; and Simon blew out two leisured smoke rings.

'Have you lost your voice, Rudolf?'

'Why?'

'There must be some more policemen in Munich. From what I've seen I shouldn't think there was room for many, but you might find one or two. You could try yodelling for 'em.'

'I doubt whether that would be so expedient,' said the prince, tapping a length of ash from his cigarette—'now that we know that the jewels are no longer in your possession.'

Simon sat up. That was a new one on him—straight from the bandbox and dolled out with ribbons. It caught him slap in the middle of his complacency and made him blink.

'Yeah?' he said automatically. 'I haven't seen any corpses carried out'

'Would that be a corollary?'

'It would be if any of your birds tried to go scratching round my room. There's not only two guns in it—there's a girl who can shoot the pips out of a razzberry keeping 'em warm, and she doesn't sleep on her feet. Now think up something else that'll cure hiccoughs!'

The prince showed a glimmer of pearly teeth.

'In that case,' he said imperturbably, 'we must feel thank­ful that the porter is an observant man with a good memory.'

'Meaning exactly?'

'You went out at eleven o'clock this morning with a parcel, and you came back without it.'

Simon raked him with crystalline blue eyes. He had an in­stant recollection of the scene in which he had surprised the prince, and in the same flash he understood the significance of it. The very words that must have been spoken trickled almost verbatim through his imagination. His Sublime Eminence's dear young friend had promised to deliver a small package for him. It was vitally important that it should be sent off before midday. Had anything been done about it? The package would be about so big. His dear young friend was inclined to be forgetful. Could the porter remember if he had seen the gentleman leaving the hotel with such a package as had been described? . . . The interrogation would have been simplicity itself to a man of the Crown Prince's magnetic geniality, once he had realized that such a contingency was on the cards. And if it had proved fruitless there would have been no harm done. Mentally the Saint raised his hat to that effort of induc­tive speculation.

'I won't deceive you,' said the Saint. 'We have ceased to hold the baby.'

'Others have also found it dangerous,' murmured the prince.

'That's just how it struck me,' said the Saint with equanim­ity. 'So I got rid of it. I went out and bought three fat packets of German cigarettes. I came home and loaded the swag into 'em, and jammed it tight with cotton wool. I tied the boxes up in brown paper and stuck on a label. And then I went out and shoved the whole works into the post office across the way —just ordinary parcel post, and no registration or