The Saint's Getaway

might choose to dispose of himself mean­while, he would still be available when he was wanted—unless he elected to step right off the train and break his neck. And the Saint would watch the old fox creep into the last covert, according to the rules of the game as he knew them. It had never occurred to him to refuse the unspoken appeal that had leapt at him out of the doomed man's weary eyes as he sidled that casual glance into the compartment; and yet he never guessed on what a strange twist of the trail that unthink­ing chivalry was to lead him.

He looked at the litter of curled wood shavings on the op­posite seat, and then up at the partition.

'I suppose you heard all you wanted to?' he said.

The reply came as a surprise to him, in a wry grin that warped its way across the man's face of bitter fatalism.

'I heard nothing, mein lieber Freund. Marcovitch heard— that little cub of the young jackal. If my gun had not stuck in my pocket you would have found him here instead of me.'

'He was listening here when you found him?'

'Ja. And I think he has heard too much. You had better kill him quickly, Herr Templar—he will be troublesome.'

Krauss coughed painfully; and there was blood on his handkerchief. Then he raised his eyes and saw the uniform of an­other ticket inspector in the corridor outside, and he seemed to smile cynically under his make-up. As the door grated open again he pulled himself together with an effort of will that must have been almost super-human. It was the most eerie performance that the Saint had ever seen, and it left him dumb with wonder at the magnificent sardonic courage of it.

Krauss jerked himself almost upright in his corner and sat there unsupported, with his hands clasped calmly on his lap. He met the Saint's eyes expressionlessly, and spoke in a voice that rang out oddly with the iron strength of his self-control— a voice that hadn't the minutest tremor in it—as if he were merely setting the trivial capstone on an ephemeral argument.

'After all,' he said, 'when one is confronted with a sum­mons, one can still pay one's debts with a good grace.'

Simon groped around for his ticket and offered it to be clipped.

And Josef Krauss did the same. That was the one simple act with which he paid his debt in the only way that was left to him. He did it with an unflinching rendering of the benevolent and rather fatuous smile that belonged to his disguise, playing out the last lines of his part without a fault, while the hot stab of death seared bitterly into his lungs.

He received his ticket back, and beamed at the inspector.

'We come at half past-eleven to Koln, nicht wahr?'

'At eleven thirty-eight, mein Herr.'

'So. Now I am very tired. Will you have to disturb me at Wurzburg and Mainz?'

A note rustled in his hand, and the inspector accepted it graciously.

'If you will allow me to keep your ticket until after we have left Mainz, hochehrwurdener Herr, I will see that your sleep is not interrupted.'

'Herzlichen Dank!'

The official bowed his way out respectfully—he had pocketed a tip that would have been notable at any time, and which be­came almost an epoch-making event when the donor's garb confessed to a vocation whose members are rarely able to com­pete with millionaires in purchasing the small luxuries of travel. The door closed after him; and Simon turned slowly from watching him go, and saw the dour fatalism grinning again from Krauss's eyes.

'At least, my death will put you to no inconvenience,' he said.

Then the supernatural endurance which had shored him up through those last minutes seemed to fall away as if the king­pins had been wiped out of it, and he sagged back with a little sigh.

Simon leaned over and dried a thin trickle of blood from one corner of the relaxed mouth. The glazing eyes stared at him mockingly, and Krauss fought for a breath. He spoke once more, but his voice was so low that the Saint only just caught the words.