The Saint's Getaway

you.'

Monty saw the prince's livid face. . . .

And then a new sound broke into the room—faint and dis­tant at first, swelling gradually until it seemed to pierce the eardrums like a rusty needle. The Saint stiffened up and stood still. And he heard it again—the mournful rising and falling wail of a police siren. It shrilled into his brain eerily, mount­ing up to its climax like the shriek of a lost soul, moaning round the room at its height like the scream of a tormented ghost. It was so clear that it might have been actually under his feet.

Simon sprang to the window and flung it up. Down in the street below he saw two squad cars pulling in to the curb, spilling their loads of uniformed men. Among them, under a street lamp, he could recognize the officer whom he had mis­directed on the road. The pursuit squadron had come home.

The Saint turned and faced the room. In his heart he had expected no less. He was quite calm.

'Will you hold the fort again, Monty?' he said.

He ran quickly down the stairs and the corridor leading to the vestibule. As he came out of the corridor he saw the of­ficer mounting the steps. For an instant they stared at each other across the doorway.

Then Simon slammed the great doors in the officer's face, and dropped the bar across them.

He heard a muffled shout from outside, and then the thumping of fists and gun butts on the massive woodwork; but he was dashing into the nearest room with a window on the street. He looked out and saw a third squad car driving up; then a bullet slapped through the glass beside him and combed his hair with flying splinters. He ducked, and grap­pled with the heavy steel shuttering that was rolled away on one side of the window. He unfolded it and slammed it into place, and went to the next window. A hail of shots wiped the glass out of existence as he reached it, but the next volley spattered against the plates of armour steel. He had been right about that police station—it was built like a fortress. Simon sprinted from room to room like a demon, barricading one window after another until the whole of the ground floor on the street side was as solid as the walls in which the win­dows were set.

Then he went through to the back of the building. A section of armed men detached from the main body nearly forestalled him there: there was a back door opening onto a small square courtyard, and one of them had his foot over the threshold when the Saint came to it. Simon swerved round the levelled Luger: the shot singed his arm before he thrust the man back­wards and banged the door after him.

The other windows at the back were barred, and Simon could tell at a glance that the bars would withstand any as­sault for at least half an hour. A face loomed up in one of the windows while the Saint was making his reconnaissance, and he was barely in time to throw himself to the floor before the man's automatic was spitting lead at him like a machine gun.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Simon lay flat on his belly and watched the bullets stringing a ruled line of pock-marks along the plaster of the wall over his head. He crawled out on his stomach and went upstairs again, and when he reached the police chief's office he had a Luger automatic rifle under each arm.

He pushed one of them into Patricia's hands.

'Over the landing, and take any of the rooms opposite. Some of 'em are trying to break in at the back. Keep 'em away from the door. Don't hit anyone if you can help it—and don't get hit yourself!'

He flung himself across to the window which he had opened before. Some of the policemen were keeping back the crowd of civilians who had materialized from nowhere; others were standing in groups watching the police station, and the Saint's appearance was the signal for a scattered fusillade. Another man was running across the street with an axe.

Bullets chipped the window frame and scraped showers of plaster from the ceiling as the Saint took aim. He dropped the man with the axe with a flesh wound in the fleshy part of his leg; another man picked up the axe and rushed for the main doors. Simon spread a curtain of clattering steel along the cobbles in front of the man's feet and checked the rush. It was certain suicide to take a step further into that rain of spattering death. The officer shouted a command, and the man ran back with the Saint slamming bullets round his feet.

The police retired behind the shelter of their cars, and paused. Simon saw the peak of the officer's cap rise up, and sent it flying with a well aimed shot. The man sank down again, and Simon proceeded methodically to plug the tires of the police cars. A