The Saint's Getaway

get on the way, wait till you hear the next train through, cross the line, and walk out the other side as if you owned the railroad—giving up the return half of your ticket. All clear so far?'

'I think so,' said the American girl slowly. 'But what's it all for?'

'I've got a job for you,' said the Saint steadily. 'You wanted the complete story of those crown jewels, and this is part of it. Your next move is the police station. You're a perfectly honest American journalist on vacation who's got wind of the at­tempted mail robbery and general commotion. We must know definitely what's happened to Marcovitch and his troupe of performing gorillas, and there's only one way to find out. Some­one's got to jazz into the lion's den—and ask.'

Simon looked down at her quietly; but the hell-for-leather twinkle was still dancing way down in his eyes. Sitting up there beside him, Monty Hayward began to understand the spell which the Saint must have woven around those cynical young freebooters of death who had followed him in the old days— the days which Monty Hayward knew only from hearsay and almost legendary record. He began to understand the fanatical loyalty which must have welded that little band together when they flung their quixotic defiance in the teeth of Law and Un­derworld alike, when every man's hand was against them and only the inspired devilry of their leader stood between them and the wrath of a drab civilization. And it came to Monty Hayward, that phlegmatic and unimpressionable man, in a sudden absurd flash of blind surrender, that if ever that little band should be gathered once more in the sound of the trumpet he would ask for no prouder fate than to be among their company. ...

'I'm not asking you to do anything disreputable,' said the Saint. 'As a reporter, it's your job to get all the news; and if you happen to share some of it with a friend—well, who's going to lose their sleep?'

'I should worry. But when do I get the rest of the story?'

'When we've got it ourselves. I've promised you shall have it, and I shan't forget. But this has got to come first I told you I'd help you as much as you helped me. I wouldn't give you the run-around for worlds—I couldn't afford to. We need that piece of news. It's the one thing that'll lead us to the only cli­max that's any use to anyone. If we lose Marcovitch, I lose my crown jewels—and your story's up the pole. You're the only one who can save the game. You're a journalist—will you go on and journalize?'

The others went still and silent in a heart-stopping moment of revelation. The preposterous surmise that had been tapping at the doors of their belief ever since the Saint began speaking burst in on them as an eternal fact. And with it came a real­ization of all that hung from the Saint's madness and that crazy instant of inspiration back in the woods by the railroad.

The Saint had never been thinking of defeat. With the hunt hard behind him and a price on his head, when he should have been thinking of nothing but escape, he had still been able to play with a madcap idea that fortune had thrown into his path. There was something about it which stunned all logic and all questions—a sense of the joyously inevitable which swept every sane criticism aside. It stirred something in the heart which was beyond reach of reason, like the cheering of a thousand throats or the swing of a regiment moving as one man—something that was rooted in the core of all human impulse, a primeval passion of victory that lifted the head higher and sent the blood tingling through the veins. . . . And the Saint was almost laughing.

'Will you try it?' he asked.

And Nina Walden said, with her marvellous amethyst eyes full upon his: 'I can do that for you—Saint.'

The Saint reached down and put out a brown hand.

'Good girl. . . . And when you've got the dope, all you have to do is rustle back to the Konditorei where you left Pat. Monty and I will park the lorry and be around. We'll find you somewhere. And it'll be a swell story.' He smiled. 'And thanks, Nina,' he said.

The girl smiled back.

Then the Saint spilled over into his seat. He caught Patricia up to him and kissed her on the lips. The six-wheeler's engine raced with a protesting scream, and the huge truck jolted on up the road.

X.     HOW SIMON  TEMPLAR DISCOURSED ABOUT

 PROHIBITION, AND  PATRICIA  HOLM  WALKED

LIKE A PRINCESS