'All clear,' said the Saint.
He closed in on the other side of Monty's
The Saint jerked his head towards a door on the far side of the office, through which came the murmur of voices.
'I think that must be the charge room,' he whispered, in Monty's ear. 'Don't make a sound—we aren't ready for the alarm yet——'
A subdued clicking noise blurred into his speech, and he looked round swiftly. It came from a private telephone exchange in one corner, where a tiny red bulb was blinking its impatient summons.
The Saint dropped into the operator's stool and plugged in on the calling circuit. Monty listened tensely, trying to make out the brief words which were clacking through the receiver diaphragm. Only a couple of sentences were spoken; and then he saw the Saint smile and clip out a single word of reply.
Simon came out of the stool and searched round for the main lead-in wire. He found it and broke it loose with one jerk. Then he spoke a second time in Monty's ear.
'The Big Cheese is somewhere upstairs. That was him—asking for Pat and the witnesses to be taken up to his office. Keep things quiet while I look after him—there are guns on those stiffs which you can take, and there's sure to be another way out of the charge room which you'll have to watch for. Don't shoot if you can possibly help it. I'll be right back.'
He vanished into the vestibule and turned into the corridor which he had already observed. A short way down it there was a door on the right, through which he heard the same voices talking—the second entrance to the charge room which he had already guessed of. Simon would have given much to listen there for a while, but the ticking seconds were vital. The dusk was now well advanced, and at any moment the squad cars which had depleted the station staff to a negligible fraction would be snoring up the street again with the reports of their fruitiest chase. And when that happened the slugs would be fairly spawning in the salad. . . . The Saint closed his lips grimly and tiptoed past the door without a backward glance.
He came through to a flight of stone stairs and went up them. On the landing above there were doors all around him. He sank on one knee and scanned the floor for a sign of the room from which the telephone call had come. Only one door showed a tell-tale streak of light dose to the ground. His luck was holding magnificently. He walked up to the door and knocked, instantly receiving the curt command to enter.
A white-haired man with a square jaw and military shoulders, and a middle-aged man with a typical bullet head, both in plain clothes, looked up from a desk littered with maps and papers as the Saint came in.
Simon let them see his gun and his smile, and reverted to his very best German.
'I believe you were looking for me,' he said.
2
The two men coagulated where they stood, staring at him whitely in the dumb startlement of his arrival. If the door had opened to admit a herd of emerald-green hippopotami they could scarcely have been more flabbergasted. But beyond the involuntary swelling of their eyes and the limp fall of their chins they made no movement. Whatever they may have lacked as shining lights of the Law, they were not deficient in human courage.
Several seconds went by before the elder of the two spoke.
'What do you want?' he asked calmly.
'A little talk,' said the Saint. He gestured with his automatic towards the chief's right hand, which was sliding stealthily across the desk towards a row of bell pushes. 'You can save yourself the trouble of ringing—all the wires are disconnected, and in any case no one would answer.'
Perhaps he was guilty of stretching the truth, but the chief did not know it. And the warning was spoken with such an air of quiet conviction that it went home as effectively as a shot from the Saint's steady gun. The chief's hand relaxed.
'How did you get in?'
