The Saint's Getaway

is why I didn't join you before—him and Rudolf's five feet of stickphast. Well, I can tell you where I last saw Prawn-face. He was lashed to a chair in the Crown Prince's schloss with that hellish screw tightening into his skull—being invited to open his strong-box and disclose the sparklers. That parson is Com­rade Krauss, the bird who first lifted that packet of jewels and began the stampede!'

Patricia recaptured the remains of her cigarette.

'One minute, boy. . . . No—he couldn't have recognized Monty and me. He's never been near us in his life. And you dodged him. . . . But how did he get here?'

'Made his getaway in the confusion, as I expected he would. And if any man's got a right to be thirsting for Rudolf's blood, he has. Why he should be on this particular schnellzug is still

more than we know—unless maybe he overshot the mark think­ing we'd got farther ahead than we have. We shall know soon enough. If this journey is peaceful I shall have lived in vain.'

The prospect appeared to please him. Nothing was more certain than that he was in the one element for which he had been born: the delight of it danced in those rakehell blue eyes——the eyes of a king in his own kingdom.

'What do we do?' asked Patricia.

She asked it from her own corner, with her hands tucked in the broad leather belt of her tweed costume. It was a swash­buckler's belt with a great silver buckle, an outrageous belt, a belt that no lady would have dreamed of wearing; and she looked like a scapegrace Diana. She asked her question with long, slim legs stretched out and her fair head tilted rather lazily back on the cushions, with a hint of the same laziness in her voice—perhaps the most obvious thing she could have said, but it made Monty Hayward fill his eyes with her, belt and all. And the Saint pulled her hair.

'What do we do, lass?' he challenged. 'Well, what's wrong with a little tour of inspection? I could just do with a glimpse of the ungodly gnashing their teeth to give me an appetite for lunch.'

'What's wrong with sitting where we are?' replied Monty reasonably. 'We aren't getting, into mischief. You could spend several hours working out how you're going to get me across the next frontier and take the jewels with you as well. And by the way, where are the ruddy things?'

'They'll be waiting for us at the poste restante in Cologne— where moth and rust may corrupt, but Rudolfs will have a job to break through and steal.'

Monty scratched his head.

'I'm still trying to get that clear,' he said. 'What have you done with them?'

'Bunged 'em into the post, laddie—all done up in brown paper, with bits of string and sealing wax and everything. As I told Rudolf. They're on their way now—they might even be on this very train—but there's no detective on earth who could prove now that I've ever had anything to do with them, even if he thought of looking for them in the right place. In this game the great idea is to have brains,' said the Saint modestly.

Monty digested the pronouncement with becoming gravity. And then Patricia stood up.

'Let's go, boy,' she said recklessly; and the Saint hauled himself up with a laugh.

'And shall we dally with the archdeacon or gambol with the gun artist?'

He framed the question in a tone that required no answer, balancing himself easily in the swaying carriage, with a ciga­rette between his lips and one hand shielding his lighter—he was as unanswerable as a laughing Whirlwind with hell-for-leather blue eyes. He was not even thinking of alternatives.

And then he saw the hole that had been bored through the partition on his left—just an inch or two below the mesh of the luggage grid.

The raw, white edges of it seemed to blaze into his vision out of the smooth, drab surface of the varnished woodwork, pin­ning him where he stood in a sudden hush of corrosive immo­bility. Then his gaze flicked down to the half-dozen fresh white splinters that lay on the seat, and the smile in his eyes hard­ened to a narrow glitter of steel.

'Or should we just sit here and behave