The Saint's Getaway

'Sehen Sie gut nach . . . dem blauen Diamont. . . . Er ist . . . wirklich . . . preislos ...'

Then he was silent.

Simon Templar rose quietly to his feet. He put out a steady hand and pressed the lids down over the derisive eyes that had gone suddenly blind and rigid in their orbits; and then he looked round and saw Monty Hayward in the doorway. Pa­tricia Holm came in behind him.

'You know, Simon,' said Monty, after a moment's eloquent stillness, 'if you show me a few more stiffs, I believe I shall be­gin to get quite used to it.'

'I shouldn't be surprised,' said the Saint laconically.

He took out his cigarette case and canted a cigarette gently into his mouth, facing the others soberly, while they searched for the meaning of his terseness.

'Did you have trouble with that ticket inspector?' hazarded Patricia.

'Not one little bit.' The Saint looked at her straightly. 'There wasn't any cause for it. You see, Josef figured he had a bill to pay. He told the inspector he wanted to go to sleep, and tipped him like a prince not to be disturbed till we get to Cologne.'

Slowly the other two built up in their minds the full signifi­cance of that curt explanation, while the only sound in the compartment was the harsh rattle and jar of their race over the metals. It was a silence which paid its inevitable tribute to the code by which the man in the corner had ordered his grim passing.

'Did Josef make that hole?' queried Monty Hayward presently.

'No. Marcovitch did that—the boy friend who tailed you on board. Josef walked in on him, and lost the draw. The last I saw of Marcovitch, he was busting all records down towards the brake van. And I guess he's my next stop.'

The Saint pushed his hands into his trouser pockets and walked past, out into the corridor. Patricia and Monty fol­lowed him. They lined up outside; and the Saint drew at his cigarette and gazed through a window into the unrolling land­scape.

'Not the three of us,' he said. 'We aren't muscling in. Pat —I think it's your turn for a show. There may be trouble; and the ungodly are liable to be smooth guys before the Lord. I'd like to have you a carriage length behind me. Keep out of sight—and watch your corners. If the party looks tough, beat it quietly back and flag Monty.'

'O. K., Chief.'

'Monty, you stay around here till you're sent for. Get talk­ing to someone—and keep talking. Then you'll be in balk. You're the reserve line. If we aren't back in twenty minutes, try and find out what's wrong. And see your gun's working!'

'Right you are, old sportsman.'

'And remember your wife and children,' said the Saint piously.

He turned on his heel and went roaming down the train, humming an operatic aria under his breath. The decks were clearing for action in fresh earnest, and that suited him down to the ground. And yet a little bug of vague perplexity was starting to nose around in the dark backgrounds of his brain, nibbling about in the impenetrable hinterlands of intuition like the fret of a tiny whetstone. It blurred fitfully on the tenu­ous outfringings of a deep-buried nerve, sending dim flitters of irritation telegraphing up into the obscure recesses of his consciousness; and every one of those messages feathered up a replica of the same ragged little question mark into the sleek line of his serenity. Ten tunes in a minute he glossed the line down again, and ten times in a minute the identical finicky in­terrogation smudged through it like a wisp of fabric trailed across an edge of wet paint.

Still humming the same imperturbable tune, he came to the end of a coach and eased himself cautiously round into the con­nection tunnel. With equal caution he stepped across the sway­ing platforms and emerged circumspectly into the foyer of the next car. Down the length of the alleyway ahead he saw only a small female infant with platinum blonde pigtails, and continued on his way with unruffled watchfulness.

The dying words of Josef Krauss were ticking over in his mind as a kind of monotonous accompaniment to the melody