The Saint's Getaway

'It's been a great day,' Monty,' he said.

He glanced round the room.

Prince Rudolf was rousing again, staring as if hypnotized at the police chief and the inspector who were gazing down at him. The meaning of their presence was writing itself over his brain in letters of fire. Then he turned his head and saw the Saint.

He struggled to his feet. One of the things that Simon would always remember was the Crown Prince's last charm­ing smile, and the gesture of those eloquent hands.

'After all, my dear young friend,' said the prince gently, 'you have not disappointed me.'

The Saint looked at him without answering.

Then he turned to the desk and picked up a flat ebony ruler, He went with it to the machine gun and rammed it through the firing handles, locking down the trigger button, and the Nordenfeld started a continuous crackling as the breech sucked in the long belt of ammunition.

Simon left it and faced Monty again.

'Good luck, old lad,' he said.

The Saint's hand was out, and the blue eyes smiled. Monty Hayward found himself without words, though there were questions still teeming in his mind. But he took the Saint's hand in a firm grip.

He felt a last strong touch on his shoulder, and the Saint laughed. And then Simon Templar was gone.

Monty Hayward heard him across the landing, calling to Patricia. The firing from the other room ceased. Their foot­steps went down the stairs.

Monty stood where he was. He wondered whether those two splendid outlaws were choosing to go out as they had lived, in a blaze of their own glory and the stabbing flames of guns, making one last desperate bid for freedom. And he didn't know. His brain had gone hazy. He saw the Crown Prince fingering a button on his coat, saw the prince's hand go to his mouth; but still he didn't move—not even when Nina Walden cried out, and the prince sat down quietly like a tired man. . . . The door below was breaking in. He could hear every blow pounding through the heart of the seasoned oak, and the hoarse voices of the men working. There was less firing outside, but the Nordenfeld with the jammed trigger still played the crackling message of the man who had gone,

A long time afterwards—it might have been centuries, or it might have been a few seconds—Monty Hayward went to the window and stood beside the gun, looking out.

He saw the front doors give way, and the grey-uniformed men pouring in. He heard their boots clattering up the stairs, heard them pounding on the door of the room where he was, shouting for it to be opened. A bullet crashed through the panels and flattened itself on the wall a yard to his left. Still he did not move. The Saint had locked the door as he went out and taken the key. The police chief bawled some­thing to that effect, and a dozen shoulders tore the door from its hinges. Policemen filled the room.

Monty knew that the gun at his side gave a last expiring cough and went silent; that the room was a babel of voices; that Nina Walden was standing beside him and looking out also; that men were shaking him, barking their questions in his ear. He knew all those things, but they were only vague impressions in the haze of his memories.

What he saw, and saw clearly, was a figure in field grey that came out of the main doors with the limp form of a fair-haired girl slung over his shoulder. Monty saw the crowd surge round them, heard the uniformed man's curt explanation murmured from lip to lip through the crowd, and made out the word 'venvundet' in it. He saw a passage open up through the mob, and the girl carried through on the shoul­der of the grey uniform to the Crown Prince's Rolls. He saw the yellow car begin to move slowly through the milling crowd, gaining speed as it won through the densest part, with the grey uniform at the wheel and the girl beside him in the front seat. And he saw, he would have sworn he saw, that as the yellow car reached the open street and whirled away into the night, the driver raised one hand in gay debonair wave—even before another man appeared on the station steps with a shout of revelation that was taken up in the furious rumbling of a thousand throats.

Still Monty Hayward stood there, not hearing the impatient voices round him, not answering them; a free man, living again the unforgettable hours of his adventure and seeing all his life ahead. So he would go back to his life. And the Saint would go on. For it was thus that their paths led them. There would be a chase, but the police cars had already been dis­abled. There would be cordons, but the Saint would slip through them. There would be armed men at every frontier, but those two would still get away. He knew they would get away.