The Saint's Getaway

Simon put his hands on his hips and continued to gaze up at the drama on the line.

'We were bounced off,' he said simply. 'Marcovitch rode us out on a rail. I'm not bragging about it. He'd cleaned up the van when I got there—and my guess was right The jewels were travelling with us. His pockets were stuffed with 'em, and I saw a diamond he'd dropped wedged between the floor boards to make it a cinch. And right there when I blew in it was a choice of death or get from under. We got from under— just.'

The smile on the Saint's lips was as superficial as a reflection in burnished bronze. There was something of the implacable immobility of a watching Indian about him as he stood at gaze with his eyes narrowed against the sun. The staccato sen­tences of his synopsis broke off like a melody cut short in the middle of a bar, leaving his listeners in midair; but the con­clusion was carved deep into the unforgetting contours of his face. He wasn't complaining. He wasn't saying a word about the run of the cards. He wasn't even elaborating one single vaporous prophecy about what might happen when he and Marcovitch got together again over a bottle of vodka to yarn over old times. Not just at that moment But the indomitable purpose of it was etched into every facet of his unnatural qui­escence, sheathing him like a skin of invisible steel. And once again the parting riddle of Josef Krauss went ticking through the core of his stillness like a gramophone record that has jammed its needle into one hard-worn groove. . . .

And then the gas picnic up on the track began to sort itself out. One of the officials tore himself away from the centre of rhetoric and started to urge the passengers back into their car­riages. The empurpled lady lifted her yapping paladin tenderly into the last coach, and was in her turn assisted steatopygously upwards. The second official, brandishing a large notebook vaguely in his left hand, pressed the still voluble Marcovitch after her. Gradually the train re-absorbed its jabbering de­bris like a large and sedate vacuum cleaner. The locomotive, succumbing at last to the force of overwhelming example, let out a mighty cloud of steam and wagged its tail triumphantly. Somebody blew a whistle; and the northbound express resumed its interrupted journey.

Simon Templar turned away from the emptying landscape with an imperceptible shrug. He had not expected any im­promptu search party to be organized. A trio of armed and desperate mail bandits would have very few attractions as a quarry to a trainload of agitated tourists, and transcontinental expresses cannot be left lying about the track while their pas­sengers play a game of hare and hounds. The incident would be reported at the next station, twenty miles up the line, and the whole responsibility turned over to the police. And the get­away would have to find its own way on.

The Saint threw himself down on a bank of grass, and lay back with his hands behind his head, staring up into the sky through the soft green tracery of the leaves.

'After all,' he said profoundly, 'life is just a bowl of cher­ries.' Patricia leaned on the trunk of the great tree and kicked at a stone.

'You might have borrowed Monty's gun and plugged Mar­covitch while he was talking,' she said wistfully.

'Sure. And then I don't suppose they'd even have had to bother to turn out his pockets. The minute he became hori­zontal he'd 've cascaded diamonds like a dream come true. I don't know how you feel about it, old girl, but I should just hate those jools to fall into the hands of the police. It might be kind of difficult to establish our claim and get 'em back.'

Monty Hayward produced a pipe and began to scrape it out with his penknife.

'Getting them back from Marcovitch,' he observed, 'will be comparatively child's play.'

'As Simon said,' murmured Patricia softly, 'it seems a lot of fuss to make over one little blue diamond.'

She spoke almost without thinking; and after she had spoken there was a silence.

And then, very firmly and distinctly, the Saint said: 'Hell! . . .'

'I know how you feel about it, old man,' said Monty Hay-ward sympathetically; and there he stopped, with the rest of his speech drying up in a hiatus of blank bewilderment. For the Saint had rolled over on one elbow in a sudden leap of volcanic energy, and his eyes were blazing.

'But that's just what you don't know!' he cried. 'We've been bounced off a train—chucked out on our ears and darned glad to be let off as lightly as that. And why? God of battles, what have we been thinking about all this time? What have we been daydreaming about Rudolf?'

'I thought he was a crook,' said