The Saint's Getaway

past his ear. Patricia Holm was outside, and the Saint caught her in his arms and spun her round before she could speak.

'Run for it!' he rapped. 'This is why angels have wings!'

He thrust her on; and then his eye fell on the emergency rescue outfit in its glass-fronted case on the wall beside him. He let go his gun and put his elbow through the glass, snatching the light axe from its bracket, and ran backwards with it swing­ing in his hand. Everything was a matter of split seconds in that extraordinarily discreet getaway, and no one knew better than Simon Templar that only an exhibition of agility that would make cats look silly was going to skin a ninth life out of the hornets' nest that had blown up under his feet He had been labelled for the long ride from the moment he had entered that raided brake van: the urgent menace of it had been flaming at him through the atmosphere as plainly as if it had been chalked up on the wall. And the Saint felt appropriately self-effacing. ... As the leading gunman came out of the van, Simon drew back his hand and sent the axe whistling down the corridor in a long, murderous parabola. The man let out an oath and threw up his arms to save his skull—short of com­mitting suicide, he had no option in the matter—and that distraction gave Simon the few seconds' start he needed. He raced up behind the girl and swung her into the nearest com­partment, and its solitary occupant looked up from her Ethel M. Dell and displayed a familiar face freezing into a glare of indignant horror.

'Must you follow me everywhere?' she squeaked. 'You and your filthy germs——'

'Madam, we were just having a little bug hunt,' said the Saint soothingly; and then the woman saw the gun in his hand and rushed to the communication cord with a shrill scream.

Simon grinned faintly and glanced past her out of the win­dow. They were running over a low embankment at the foot of which was a thick wood; he couldn't have arranged it better if he had tried—it was the one slice of luck that had come to him without a string on it that day.

'Saved us the trouble,' murmured the Saint philosophically.

He was wedging his automatic at an angle between the slid­ing door and its frame, so that it pointed slantingly down the corridor. The train was slowing down rapidly, and he prayed that that whiskered gag would get by for as long as they took to stop. Also he had an idea that the alarm given by the fright­ened lady would push a hairier fly into the ointment of the un­godly than anything else that could have happened.

He looked round and saw the shadow of puzzlement on Patricia's forehead.

'Has anything gone wrong, lad?' she asked; and the ques­tion struck him as so comic that he had to laugh.

'Nothing to speak of,' he said. 'It's only a few rough men trying to kill us, but we've had people try that before.'

'Then why did you want the train stopped?'

'Because I want to back Bugle Call for the Derby, and I've heard no news of totes in heaven. I can't think when we've been so unpopular. It seems a lot of fuss to make over one little blue diamond, but I suppose Rudolf knows best.'

He went over to the other side of the compartment and opened the window wide. The train was grinding itself to a standstill, and once it came to rest there would be very little time to spare. In one corner, the apostle of strength and silence was clutching her Pekinese and moaning hysterically at inter­vals. Simon ruffled the dog's ears, hauled himself up with his hands on the two luggage racks, and swung his legs acrobati­cally over the sill.

2

Monty Hayward was a couple of coaches farther north when the train stopped.

He had begun to drift thoughtfully southward a minute or two after Patricia Holm left him. The Saint's instructions to engage someone in conversation appealed to him. He felt that a spot of light-hearted relaxation was just what he needed. And the orders he had been given seemed to leave him as free a hand as he could have desired. The prospect lifted up his spirits like an exile's dream of home.

He squeezed past a group of chattering Italians and came up beside the girl who was gazing pensively through a window near the end of the corridor. She moved aside abstractedly to let him pass, but Monty had other ideas.

'Don't you know that policemen get their flat feet from standing about all day?' he said reproachfully.