The Saint's Getaway

I've always wanted to do it. I noticed a swell site for it right opposite that police sta­tion. We'll be moving as soon as you're ready.'

Monty Hayward finished his beer with rather less enthusi­asm than he had started it, while Simon clinked money on the table and treated himself to another yard of the barmaid's teeth. It was on the tip of Monty's tongue to spread out a bar­rage of other and less half-hearted protests—to say that the jam was tight enough as they were without giving it any gratui­tous chances—but something else rose up in his mind and stopped him. And he knew at the same time that nothing would have stopped the Saint. He caught that smile in the Saint's eye again; but now it was aimed straight at him, with a sprin­kling of banter in it, cutting clean as a rapier thrust to his in­most thoughts. It stripped the meaningless habit of lukewarm criticism clear away from him, taking him back to other mo­ments in those fourteen crowded hours which he had lately been remembering with a contentment that he could not have explained in words. It brought him face to face with a self that was still unfamiliar to him, but which would never be un­familiar again. In that instant of utter self-knowledge he felt as if he had broken out of a bondage of heavy darkness; he was a free man for the first time in his life.

'O. K.,' he said.

They went out into the streets again, finding them softened by the first shadows of twilight. Monty was still wondering what new lunacy had brewed itself in the Saint's brain, but he asked no more questions.

Men and women passed them on the pavements, sparing them no more than a vacant glance which observed nothing.

Monty began to feel the flush of a growing confidence. After all, there was nothing about him which could legitimately induce a sane population to stand still and gape at him. He looked again at the Saint, detachedly, and saw a subtle change in his leader which increased that assurance. The Saint was slouching a little, putting his weight more ruggedly on his heels, with his shoulders rounded and the half-smoked ciga­rette drooping negligently from one corner of his mouth: he was just a plain, unaspiring artisan, with Socialistic opinions and an immoderate family. Again the picture was perfect; and Monty knew that if he played his own role half as well he would pass muster in any ordinary crowd.

A miscellaneous junk store showed up on the other side of the road, with its wares overflowing onto benches set out on the sidewalk. Simon crossed the road and invaded the gloom­ily odorous interior. He emerged with a large and shabby sec­ond-hand bag, with which they continued their journey. A hardware store was the next stop, and there Simon proceeded to acquire an outfit of tools. The purchase taxed his German to the utmost, for the layman's technical vocabularies may be sketchy enough in his own language, without venturing into the complexities of a specialized foreign jargon. The Saint, who could carry on any everyday conversation in half a dozen different dialects, could no more have trusted himself to ask for a centre-bit or a handspike than he could have knitted himself a suit of combinations. He explained that his kit had been stolen, and bluffed his way through, wandering round the shop and collecting likely-looking instruments here and there, while he kept the proprietor occupied with a flow of patter that was coarse enough to keep any laughter-loving Boche amused for hours. It was finished at last, and they hit the footway again while the storekeeper was still wheezing over the Saint's final sally.

'Well—what are we supposed to be?' inquired Monty Hay-ward interestedly, as they turned their steps back towards the police station; and the Saint shrugged at him skew-eyed.

'I haven't the vaguest idea, old lad. But if we don't look impressively energetic it won't be my fault.'

They stopped directly opposite the station, and Simon laid his bag down carefully in the road. Gazing about rather blankly, Monty noticed for the first time that there was a rec­tangular metal plate let into the cobbles at his feet. Simon fished a hooked implement out of his bag, inserted it in a sort of keyhole, and yanked up the slab. They got their fingers un­der the edge and lifted it out onto the road beside the chasm which it disclosed. Without batting an eyelid, the Saint de­liberately spread out an imposing array of tools all round him, sat down in the road with his legs dangling through the hole, and stared down at the maze of lead tubes and insulated wiring which he had uncovered, with an expression of owlish sagacity illuminating his face.

2

'It's not so good if you happen to open up a sewer by mis­take,' Simon remarked solemnly, 'but this looks all right.'

He hauled up a length of wire and inspected its broken end with the absorbed concentration of a monkey that has scratched up a bonanza in its cousin's scalp. He tapped Monty on the shoulder and required him also to examine the frayed strands of copper,