15 The Saint in New York

slowed down. Then, right at its side, the flashlight beamed again.

From a safe distance, Simon saw a dark object leave the window at the side of the limousine, trace an arc through the air, and vanish into the bushes at the side of the highway. Then the limousine took off like a startled hare and shot away into the night as if it had seen a ghost; but by that time the Saint was out of his car, racing up the road without a sound.

The package which Inselheim had thrown out remained by the roadside where it had fallen, and Simon recognized it at once as the parcel which the millionaire had carried under his arm when he left his apartment. That alone made it inter­esting enough, and the manner of its delivery established it as something which had to be investigated without delay— although Simon could make a shrewd grim guess at what it contained. But his habitual caution slowed up his steps before he reached it, and he merged himself into the blackness be­neath a tree with no more sound than an errant shadow. And for a short time there was silence, broken only by the soft rustle of leaves in the night wind.

The package lay in a patch of moonlight, solitary and for­lorn as a beer bottle on a Boy Scout picnic ground. The Saint's eyes were fixed on it unwinkingly, and his right hand slipped the gun out of his pocket and noiselessly thumbed the safety catch out of gear. A gloved hand moved out of the darkness, reaching for the parcel, and Simon spoke quietly.

'I don't think I'd touch that, Ferdinand,' he said.

There was a gasp from the darkness. By rights there should have been no answer but a shot, or the sounds of a speedy and determined retreat; but the circumstances were somewhat exceptional.

The leaves stirred, and a cap appeared above the greenery. The cap was followed by a face, the face by a pair of shoul­ders, the shoulders by a chest and an abdomen. The appear­ance of this human form rising gradually out of the black­ness as if raised on some concealed elevator had an amazingly spooky effect which was marred only by the physiognomy of the spectre and the pattern of its clothes. Simon could not quite accept an astral body with such a flamboyant choice of worsteds, but he gazed at the apparition admiringly enough.

'Well, well, well!' he remarked. 'If it isn't my old college chum, wearing his old school tie. Can you do any more tricks like that, Heimie?—it's fun to be fooled, but it's more fun to know!'

Heimie Felder goggled at him dumbly. The developments of the past twenty-four hours had been no small strain on his limited intellect, and the stress and surprise of them had robbed him of much of his natural elasticity and joie-de-vivre. Standing waist-high in the moonlight, his face reflected a greenish pallor which was not entirely due to the lunar rays.

'Migawd,' he said, expressing his emotions in the mildest possible terms.

The Saint smiled.

'In a year or two you'll be quite used to seeing me around, won't you?' he remarked chattily. 'That is, if you live as long as a year or two. The mob you belong to seems to have such suspicious and hasty habits, from what Pappy was telling me. . . . Excuse me if I collect this.'

He stooped swiftly and picked up the brown-paper parcel from its patch of moonlight. Heimie Felder made no attempt to stop him—the power of protest seemed to have deserted him at last, never to return. But his lips shaped a dazed com­ment of one word which groped for the last immutable land­mark of sanity in his staggering universe.

'Nuts,' Heimie said hollowly.

The Saint was not offended. He tucked the parcel under his arm.

'I'm afraid I must be going,' he murmured. 'But I'm sure we shall be getting together again soon. We seem to be des­tined ...'

His voice dropped to nothing as he caught the sound of a footfall somewhere on his right. Staring into the bulging eyes of the man in front of him, he saw there a sudden flicker of hope; and his teeth showed very white in the moonlight.

'I think not,' he advised softly.

His gun moved ever so slightly, so that a shaft of moonlight caught the barrel for a moment; and Heimie Felder was silent. The Saint shifted himself quietly in the darkness, so that his automatic half covered the visible target and yet was ready to turn instantly into the obscurity of the road at his side; and another voice spoke out of the gloom.

'You got it, Heimie?'