The Saint's Getaway

'I heard Rudy call you Miss Walden,' he said, 'and you mentioned being a reporter. Are those details correct?'

Nina Walden understood. He was not implicating her at all. She accepted her cue easily.

'That's right.'

'What's the job here?'

'I came in for the story of your mail robbery, Mr. Templar. Maybe you can tell me some more about it.'

The Saint swept her a bow.

'Sister, you came in at the right time. You're going out with more thrills than you ever thought you'd get. But I'm afraid this news isn't released yet. You can stay on if you give me your word not to interfere—or do anything else that might bother me.'

The girl smiled.

'I guess I haven't much choice.'

Simon's left hand saluted her. He had time to play Claude Duval with the most charming reporter he had ever met, but even while he did it he was wondering how much grace the gods were going to give him to gather up the loose ends. His glance transferred itself to the clock over the sergeant's desk. Twenty minutes after seven—and almost dark outside. . . . Yet it never occurred to him to doubt whether the wash and brush-up that bad done so much to enhance his beauty had been a wise expenditure of time. That power of thinking ahead, almost intuitively, into the most distant possibilities, and pre­paring for them long before they arose, was the gift which had made the grand moguls of the Law gnash their teeth over him for so many years in vain. And that night he might need it all.

The tableau remained mute while Monty passed from one man to the next, making a collection of their weapons. The sergeant was unarmed. Marcovitch yielded an automatic and a long thin-bladed knife. The Crown Prince had a tiny nickel-plated pistol. Simon frowned a little—he was expecting some­thing else. He waited until Monty had retired again to his position with his pockets weighted down by the load of armoury, and then he crooked a coaxing finger.

'Marcovitch—little blossom—come hither! You're too retir­ing—and we want to know all the secrets of your underwear.'

The Russian came forward sullenly. Monty Hayward and Patricia were covering the other men, and the Saint's auto­matic had suddenly taken entire charge of him. Its round gleaming barrel had slanted up and settled in a dead line with the bridge of his nose, so that he stared down the black tunnel from which sudden death could spurt into his brain at a touch.

'Right here—right up close to papa, sweetheart!'

The Saint's voice rapped at him with a ring that made him start. And Marcovitch came on. He fought every inch of the way, with his lips snarling—but he came on. The single black eye of the gun dragged him inexorably across the room, step by step—that and the living bleak blue eyes behind it.

He stopped in front of the Saint, a yard away; and the blue eyes looked him over slowly and thoughtfully.

Then the Saint's left hand flashed out at him. Marcovitch cringed from the blow that he could not avoid. But the mistake was his—the blow never materialized. Simon had done his job before Marcovitch knew what was happening. There was the sharp splitting tear of rending cloth, and one half of Mar­covitch's coat hung off him down to the elbow. In another second it was joined by half of his shirt. And the Saint grinned amiably.

'Wool next the skin, Uglyvitch?' he murmured. 'Dear me! And I thought you were a tough guy. . . .'

Something else was revealed besides the woollen vest, and that was a band of tape that stretched across the man's chest and disappeared under his armpit. A neat little bundle hung there, tied in a soiled linen handkerchief slung from the tape which passed over the opposite shoulder.

Simon ripped it off. There was another similar bundle con­cealed under the man's left arm.

'An old game—which you ought to have remembered, Monty,' said the Saint. 'He might just as well have had a gun there. . . . You can go back to your place in the bread