The Saint's Getaway

which could never let any situation be­come static under the ceaseless play of his imagination had lifted him up to a new level of audacity that the others had yet to reach. The downfall of Monty Hayward was complete: so be it: the Saint saw no need to ask for further details—he had thrust back that supreme moment into the index of episodes which might be chortled over in later years, and he was work­ing on to the object which was just then so much more ur­gently important Nina Walden was there—and the Saint liked her nerve.

'So you're a dyed-in-the-wool reporter?' he drawled; and the girl nodded bewitchingly.

'Yes, sir.'

'And you've got all your papers—everything you need to guarantee you as many facilities as a foreign journalist can corner in this country?'

'I think so.'

'And you want the biggest story of your life—a front-page three-column splash with banner lines and black type?'

'I'm hoping to get it.'

The Saint gave her smile for smile. And the Saintly smile was impetuous with a mercurial resolve that paralleled the swaggering alignment of his shoulders.

'Nina, the story's yours. I've always wanted to make one newspaper get its facts about me right before I die. But the story isn't quite finished yet, and it never will be if you're in too much of a hurry for it. We were just pushing on to finish it—and we've wasted enough time already. Come on with us—leave the interviews till afterwards—and I'll give you the scoop of the year. I don't know what it is, but I know it'll be a scoop. Wipe all your moral scruples off the map— help me as much as I'll help you—and it's a monopoly. Would you like it?'

The girl picked a loose flake of tobacco from the edge of her red mouth.

'Reporters are born without moral scruples,' she said can­didly. 'You're on.'

'We're leaving now,' said the Saint.

He flung an arm round Patricia's waist and turned her to­wards a path which led out of the clearing away from the em­bankment, a grass-paved ride broad enough for them to walk abreast; and if she had been a few pounds lighter his exuber­ance would have swung her off her feet. Even after all those years of adventure in which they had been together he would never cease to amaze her: his incredible resilience could conceive nothing more fantastic than the idea of ultimate fail­ure. In him it had none of the qualities of mere humdrum doggedness that it would have had in anyone of a more dull and commonplace fibre; it was as swift as a steel blade, a gay challenge to disaster that never doubted the abiding favour of the stars. It if had been anything less he could never have set forth in such a vein to find the end of that chequered story. Marcovitch was gone. The jewels were gone. Prince Rudolf had become an incalculable quantity whose contact with the current march of events might weave in anywhere between Munich and the North Pole. And three tarnished brigands plus a magazine-cover historian, who had been lucky to escape from the last skirmish with their lives, were left high and dry in an area of strange country that would shortly be seething with armed hostility. The task in front of them might have made hunting needles in haystacks seem like an idle pastime for blind octogenarians; but the Saint saw it only as a side road to victory.

'Pat, when this jaunt is over I think we must go back to England. You've no idea how I miss Claud Eustace Teal and all those jolly games we used to have with Scotland Yard.'

She knew that he was perfectly serious—as the Saint under­stood seriousness. He had never changed. She did not have to look at him to see the sunny glint in his eyes, the careless faith in a joyously spendthrift destiny.

She said: 'What about Monty?'

The Saint gazed ahead down the widening lane of trees.

'I should like to have kept him, but I suppose he isn't ours.'

Westwards as they walked the trees were thinning out, open­ing tall windows into a landscape of green fields and homely cottages. The golden daylight broke through the laced boughs overhead and dappled their shady path with pools of lumin­ance. A lark dived out of the clear infinity of blue and drifted earthwards like an autumn leaf. Way over on a distant slope the midget silhouettes of a ploughing team moved placidly against the sky, the tinkle of bells and the crack of the ploughman's whip coming vividly through the still air. It seemed almost unbelievable that that peaceful scene could be overrun with grey-clad men combing inexorably through the hedgerows and hollows for a scent of the irreverent corsair who had tweaked their illustrious beards; but the Saint stopped suddenly at a turn of the path, halting Patricia