line now, Comrade.'
He pushed Marcovitch away. The man's face was white with fury, but Simon Templar could endure hardships like that with singular fortitude. The two knotted handkerchiefs filled his spread hand, and their contents crunched juicily when he squeezed them in his fingers.
He gave the Crown Prince a broadside of his most seraphic smile.
'Dear old Gaffer Rudolf!' he drawled. 'So that's the simple end of an awful lot of fuss. Well, well, well! We none of us grow younger, do we?—as we've been telling each other several times to-day.'
The prince gazed at him passionlessly.
'Would it be in order to congratulate you?' he murmured; and the Saint laughed.
'Perhaps—when we've finished.'
Simon turned to Monty.
'If you'd like something more to do, old dear,' he said, 'you might try and find some more handcuffs. We shall want six pairs—if the station'll run to it. Hands only for Rudolf and Marcovitch—they've got to walk. Hands and feet for the Law —we don't want them at all. And mind how you go around that sergeant. He looks as if he might burst at any moment, and you wouldn't want to get splashed with his supper.'
Monty searched around. After a few moments he discovered a locker that was plentifully stocked with both hand and leg irons; he came back trailing the chains behind him. Under the Saint's directions the two police officers were efficiently manacled together; and finally an extra pair of handcuffs fastened them to a ringbolt set in the wall, which had apparently been used before for the restraint of refractory prisoners.
The prince smoked tranquilly until his turn came; and then he detached the cigarette end from the long jade holder, placed the holder leisurely in an inside pocket, and extended his own hands for the bracelets.
'This is a unique experience,' he remarked, as Monty locked the cuffs on his wrists. 'May I ask where we are to go?'
'Upstairs,' said the Saint coolly. 'We've got a little talk coming, and the air's better up there.'
The prince raised his sensitive eyebrows, but he made no reply.
They went up the stairs in a strange procession: Patricia and Nina Walden leading, the Saint going up backwards after them and covering the cortege, Prince Rudolf and Marcovitch following him, and Monty Hayward bringing up the rear. The prince's face remained impassive. Simon knew that that impassivity belied the workings of that quiet ruthless brain; but the prince and Marcovitch were firmly sandwiched between two fires, and they could do nothing—at the moment. And the Saint didn't care. The prince must have known it— even as the two men in the room above must have known. It was significant that Rudolf had been very silent, ever since that playful seance in the charge room had received its staggering interruption.
'This way, boys.'
Simon opened the door of the police chief's office and let the caravan file past him. He went in last—closed the door and leaned back on it.
'Sit down.'
Prince Rudolf sank into a chair. Monty prodded Marcovitch into another with the nose of his Luger. And the Saint cleared a space on the desk and sat there, dumping the two knotted handkerchiefs beside him. He put away his gun and opened the bundles, pouring the contents of both onto a single handkerchief in a shimmer of rainbow flames that seemed to light up the whole dingy room.
'The time has come, Rudolf, for us to have a little reckoning,' he said; and once again, for no reason that the others could think of, he was speaking in German. And yet to Monty Hayward there was no difference, for the man who spoke was still the Saint, making even that stodgy language as vivid and pliable as his own native tongue. 'We have a few things to learn—and you can tell us about them. And we'll have all the jewels out to encourage you. Fill your eyes with them, Rudolf. You used to be a rich man. But just for this quarter of a million pounds' worth of stones you were ready to kill men and torture them; you were ready to run up a list of murders that'd get anyone hanged three times—and frame them onto Monty and me. Which was very unkind of you, Rudy, after all the fun we had together in the old days. But you aren't denying any of it, are you?'
