The Saint's Getaway

Pelz recoiled from it in an involuntary convulsion of disgust. He felt the hairs rising on the nape of his neck, as if those odiously astigmatic eyes had stretched out of their orbits and laid their slimy contact on his flesh. But the workman seemed utterly unconscious of the repugnance which he aroused. He muttered his thanks, and turned away with a final hideous wink that warped his whole face into one ghastly deformity of innuendo.

Herr Pelz's head revolved in a perfect mesmerism of loath-ing to watch him hobbling down  the street. He couldn't even tear his gaze away from the man's back while his memory was still crawling with the impressions of that repellent stare. And thus it came about that Herr Pelz saw what he might not otherwise have noticed: that as the workman passed under the next street lamp he pulled a filthy handker­chief out of his pocket, and a scrap of paper was dragged out with it and fluttered down to the pavement.

Herr Pelz could no more have resisted that scrap of paper than he could have vowed himself into a monastery. He started towards it without a second thought, impelled solely by the degenerate curiosity which the experience had aroused. Then as he came nearer, he saw that the scrap of paper was a hun­dred-mark note.

He picked it up, and turned it over suspiciously in the lamp­light. It was unquestionably genuine.

Curiosity gave way to an even more deeply rooted cupidity. Herr Pelz flashed a furtive glance around him to see if anyone else had observed the accident. But no one seemed to be pay­ing any attention to him, and the other workman was ham­mering away at his pipes with uninterrupted vigour. Herr Pelz returned his gaze with a little less revulsion to the bene­ficent ogre's retreating figure. And as Herr Pelz looked, the ogre replaced the handkerchief in his pocket—and a second hundred-mark note drifted down on to the pavement. If there was any manifestation of Providence at which Herr Bruno Pelz had ever prayed to be a witness, it was the phe­nomenon of an endless flood of hundred-mark notes pouring down at his feet; and at that moment he seemed to be spectat­ing the nearest approach to such a prodigy that he was ever likely to see. While he stared up the street with bulging eyes, a third scrap of paper fell from the workman's pocket and floated down into the gutter—closely followed by a fourth. A fifth, a sixth, and a seventh joined them with incredible rapid­ity. The workman was shedding money all over the road like a perambulating mint. And then he turned off into a dark side alley with the eighth hundred marks flopping down to the pav­ing stones behind him.

Herr Pelz didn't even hesitate. He plunged on to his doom with his mouth hanging open, as fast as his legs would carry him. Prince Rudolf was still inside the police station, and even if he came out unexpectedly, an excuse should be easy to find. And meanwhile Fortune was opening her cornucopia and de­canting largesse with a liberality which it would have been a sin to ignore. Whether the workman was a thief, an escaped lunatic, or an eccentric millionaire—if he could be caught in that dark alley . . . Herr Pelz's black eyes gleamed like mar­bles. There had been days when he had ruled a minor under­world as master of the precarious trade of the garotte, and his hand had not lost its cunning. It would be over and finished in ten seconds, without a sound.

He hurried down the pavement, snatching up hundred-mark notes as he went. His fingers grasped the last one as he turned into the alley, and a few yards down the lane he saw another. He stooped to pick it up. . . .

And then a massive lump of metal wielded with masterly precision crashed into the back of his head. For one blissful second he gaped at a complete free fireworks display that would have been the making of any Fourth of July; and then a hospitable darkness came down and folded him in his dreams.

Monty Hayward returned like a paladin from the wars.

He lowered himself to the cobbles beside the hole in the road, and looked at the Saint with eyes that were no longer squinting. There was the seed of a smile in them—a seed such as can only be sown by the force of a doughty blow struck for the honour of lawlessness. And the Saint smiled back.

'Oke?' he drawled.

'Oke,' said Monty Hayward. 'I hid in a doorway and dotted him a peach. There was a sort of van close by, and a bloke was just starting it up. I heard him say they'd have to hustle to get to Nurnberg by dinner time, so I picked up your pal and heaved him in with the greens.' He looked round as an an­tique Ford swung into the street and clattered past. 'And there he goes!'

Simon Templar nodded, and the nod spoke volumes.

He stood up and stretched his legs.

'Then he won't bother us for some time,' he said. 'I guess we can begin.'

'Suits me, Saint.'