anything. It'll be waiting for me where I want it.' The Saint pushed his hands back in his pockets and stared at the prince seraphically through a veil of smoke. 'Got any more to say?' he purred.
Up on the wall the clock gathered its creaking springs and chimed the quarter. The margin of time was dosing in; and Simon had learned nearly everything he required to know. There was only one thing more to come—an inkling of the counter attack which must have been spinning its swift web between the lines of that entertaining little chat. And the Saint was keyed up for it like a tiger crouching for the kill.
The Crown Prince leaned forward.
'My friend, we are in danger of cutting our own throats. You have disposed of the jewels temporarily, but you will have still to recover them. It would be awkward for you if you were arrested—and I admit that it would be inconvenient for me. For the time being we have your interests in common. And yet you must acknowledge that you have not one chance in ten thousand of making your escape.'
'That sounds depressing,' said the Saint.
'It is a matter of fact. In England you have your Scotland Yard, which is the model of the whole world. Perhaps you are tempted to think that our European police organizations are inferior. You would be foolish—very foolish. You have many hundreds of miles still to travel, and every frontier will be watched for you. Every mile, every minute, will see the dice loaded more heavily against you. You have temporarily disposed of the detectives who were sent here; I do not ask how you accomplished it, but I assure you they were only a beginning. Our police do not easily forget being made to look stupid. Your arrest will be a point of honour with every detective in Germany.'
'Well?'
Simon's prompting monosyllable rapped into the prince's silence like the crack of an overstrained fiddle string.
The prince, tapped his cigarette holder thoughtfully on a pink-tinted thumbnail. He met the Saint's eyes with a survey of deliberate appraisal.
'I offer you an alliance. I offer you protection, hiding, influence, a practical certainty of escape. I have told you that in this country I am a person of some importance. Mr. Templar, we have been enemies too long. I offer you friendship and security—at the price of a division of the spoils.'
The Saint's eyes never moved; but his lips smiled.
'And how would this partnership begin?' he queried.
'My car is outside. It is at your disposal. I promise you safe conduct out of Munich—for yourself and your friends.'
For two seconds the Saint gazed at the red tip of his cigarette, with that tentative half-smile playing round his mouth.
And then he screwed the cigarette into an ash tray and stood up.
'I think I should like to use your car,' he said.
He drifted towards the street doors with his quick, swinging stride, and the prince went beside him. As they stepped out into the blazing sunshine of the Bayerstrasse the Saint's hardened vigilance scanned the street, left and right, expertly dissecting the appearance of every loiterer within sight. He eliminated them all. There was a man selling newspapers, another sweeping the street, a one-armed beggar with a tray of toys, a weedy specimen idling in front of a shop window—no one who could by any stretch of imagination be invested with the aura of bull-necked innocence which to the initiated observer fizzles like a mantle of damp squibs around the elaborately plain-clothed man in every civilized corner of the globe. It was just a little more than the Saint had seriously hoped for: it showed that the full measure of his iniquity had not yet been fully revealed to the phlegmatic myrmidons of the German police, and in any other circumstances he would have felt that the fact paid him no compliments. He had been ready for further opposition—squads of it—and his right hand had never left the gun in his pocket. The risk had to be taken.
'You are very wise,' said the prince suavely.
Simon nodded curtly, without turning his head.
His eyes swept the car that was drawn up by the curb with its engine pulsing almost inaudibly—an open, cream-coloured
