The Saint's Getaway

eyes of Saintly innocence.

'And why?' he asked. 'My dear soul—why? What else could we do? Our reasoning process was absolutely elementary. The Law was on its way, and we didn't want to meet the Law. Therefore we beetled off. Stanislaus was just beginning to get interesting: we were not through with Stanislaus. Therefore we took Stanislaus with us. What could be simpler?'

'It's not the sort of thing,' said Patricia mildly, 'that re­spectable people do.'

'It's the sort of thing we do,' said the Saint

She fell into step beside him; and the Saint warbled on in the extravagant vein to which such occasions invariably moved him.

'Talking of the immortal name of Stanislaus,' he said, 're­minds me of the celebrated Dr. Stanislaus Leberwurst, a bloke that we ought to meet some day. He applied his efforts to the problems of marine engineering, working from the hitherto ignored principle of mechanics that attraction and repulsion are equal and opposite. After eighty years of research he perfected a bateau in which the propelling force was derived from an enormous roll of blotting paper, which was fed into the water by clockwork from the bows of the ship. The blotting paper soaked up the water, and the water soaked up the blot­ting paper, thereby towing the contraption through the briny, the project was taken up by the Czecho-Slovakian Navy, but was later abandoned in favour of tandem teams of trained herrings.'

Patricia laughed and tucked her hand through his arm.

In such a mood as that it was. impossible to argue with the Saint—impossible even to cast the minutest drop of dampness on his exuberant delight. And if she had not known that it was impossible, perhaps she would not have said a word. But the puckish mischief that she loved danced in his eyes, and she knew that he would always be the same.

'Where do we make for now?' she inquired calmly.

'The old pub,' said the Saint. 'And that is where we probe further into the private life of Stanislaus.' He grinned boy­ishly. 'My God, Pat-—when I think of what life might have been if we'd left Stanislaus behind, it makes my blood bubble. He's the brightest ray of sunshine I've seen in weeks. I wouldn't lose him for worlds.'

The girl smiled helplessly. After she had taken a good look at the circumstances, it seemed the only thing to do. When you are walking brazenly through the streets of a foreign city arm-in-arm with a man who is carrying over his shoulder the ab­ducted body of a perfect stranger whom for want of better information he has christened Stanislaus—a man, moreover, who is incapable of showing any symptoms of guilt or agita­tion over this procedure—the respectable reactions which your Auntie Ethel would expect of you are liable to an attack of the dumb staggers.

Patricia Holm sighed.

Vaguely, she wondered if there were any power on earth that could shake the Saint's faith in his guardian angels; but the question never seemed to occur to the Saint himself. Dur­ing the whole of that walk back to 'the old pub'—in actual fact it took only a few minutes, but to her it felt like a few hours—she would have sworn that not one hair of the Saint's dark head was turned a millimetre out of its place by the slightest glimmer of anxiety. He was happy. He was looking ahead into his adventure. If he had thought at all about the risks of their route to the old pub, he would have done so with the same dazzlingly childlike simplicity as he followed for his guiding star in all such difficulties. He was taking Stanislaus home; and if anybody tried to raise any objections to that ma­noeuvre—well, Simon Templar's own floral offering would cer­tainly provide the nucleus of a swell funeral. . . .

But no such objection was made. The streets of Innsbruck maintained their unruffled silence, and stayed benevolently bare: even the distant yipping of the patrolman's whistle had stopped. And Simon was standing under the shadow of the wall that had been his unarguable destination, glancing keenly up and down the deserted thoroughfare which it bordered.

'This is indubitably the reward of virtue,' he remarked.

Stanislaus went to the top of the wall with one quick heave, and the Saint stooped again. Patricia felt his hands grip round her knees, and she was lifted into the air as if she had been a feather: she had scarcely settled herself on the wall when the Saint was up beside her and down again on the other side like a great grey cat. She saw him dimly in the darkness below as she swung her legs over, and glimpsed the flash of his white teeth; irresistibly she was reminded of another time when he had sent her over a wall, in the first adventure she had shared with him—one lean, strong hand had been stretched up to her exactly as it was stretched up now, only then it was stretched upwards in a flourish of debonair farewell—and a deep and abiding contentment surged through her as she jumped for him to catch her in his arms. He eased