At the end of the bridge he caught Patricia’s arm. Down to the right, he knew, a low wall ran beside the river, with a narrow ledge on the far side that would provide a precarious but possible foothold. He pointed.
“Play leapfrog, darling.”
She nodded without a word, and went over like a schoolboy. Simon’s hand smote Monty on the back.
“See you in ten minutes, laddie,” he murmured.
He tumbled nimbly over the wall with his light burden on his back, and hung there by his fingers and toes three inches above the hissing waters while Monty’s footsteps faded away into the distance. A moment later the patrolman’s heavy boots clumped off the bridge and lumbered by without a pause.
2
Steadily the plodding hoofbeats receded until they were scarcely more than an indistinguishable patter, and the intermittent blasts of the patrolman’s whistle became mere plaintive squeaks from the Antipodes. An expansive aura of peace settled down again upon the wee small hours, and made itself at home.
The Saint hooked one eye cautiously over the stonework and surveyed the scene. There was no sign of hurrying reinforcements trampling on each other in their zeal to answer the patrolman’s frenzied blowing. Simon, knowing that inhabitants of most continental cities have a sublime and blessed gift of minding their own business, was not so much surprised as satisfied. He pulled himself nimbly over the wall again and reached a hand down to Pat. In another second she was standing beside him in the road. She regarded him dispassionately.
“I always knew you ought to be locked up,” she said. “And now I expect you will be.”
The Saint returned her gaze with wide blue eyes of Saintly innocence.
“And why?” he asked. “My dear soul—why? What else could we do? Our reasoning process was absolutely elementary. The Law was on its way, and we didn’t want to meet the Law. Therefore we beetled off. Stanislaus was just beginning to get interesting: we were not through with Stanislaus. Therefore we took Stanislaus with us. What could be simpler?”
“It’s not the sort of thing,” said Patricia mildly, “that respectable people do.”
“It’s the sort of thing we do,” said the Saint.
She fell into step beside him, and the Saint warbled on in the extravagant vein to which such occasions invariably moved him.
“Talking of the immortal name of Stanislaus,” he said, “reminds me of the celebrated Dr Stanislaus Leberwurst, a bloke that we ought to meet some day. He applied his efforts to the problems of marine engineering, working from the hitherto ignored principle of mechanics that attraction and repulsion are equal and opposite. After eighty years of research he perfected a bateau in which the propelling force was derived from an enormous roll of blotting-paper, which was fed into the water by clockwork from the bows of the ship. The blotting-paper soaked up the water, and the water soaked up the blotting-paper, thereby towing the contraption through the briny. The project was taken up by the Czecho-Slovakian Navy, but was later abandoned in favour of tandem teams of trained herrings.”
Patricia laughed, and tucked her hand through his arm.
In such a mood as that it was impossible to argue with the Saint—impossible even to cast the minutest drop of dampness on his exuberant delight. And if she had not known that it was impossible, perhaps she would not have said a word. But the puckish mischief that she loved danced in his eyes, and she knew that he would always be the same.
“Where do we make for now?” she inquired calmly.
“The old pub,” said the Saint. “And that is where we probe further into the private life of Stanislaus.” He grinned boyishly. “My God, Pat—when I think of what life might have been if we’d left Stanislaus behind, it makes my blood bubble. He’s the brightest ray of sunshine I’ve seen in weeks. I wouldn’t lose him for worlds.”
The girl smiled helplessly. After she had taken a good look at the circumstances, it seemed the only thing to do. When you are walking brazenly through the streets of a foreign city arm-in-arm with a man who is carrying over his shoulder the abducted body of a perfect stranger whom for want of better information he has christened Stanislaus—a man, moreover, who is incapable of showing any symptoms of guilt or agitation over this procedure—the respectable reactions which your Auntie Ethel would expect of you are liable to an attack of the dumb staggers.
Patricia Holm sighed.
Vaguely, she wondered if there were any power on earth that could shake the Saint’s faith in his guardian angels, but the question never seemed to occur to the Saint himself. During the whole of that walk back to the old pub—in actual fact it took only a few minutes, but to her it felt like a few hours—she would have sworn that not one hair of the Saint’s dark head was turned a millimetre out of its place by the slightest glimmer of anxiety. He was happy. He was looking ahead into his adventure. If he had thought at all about the risks of their route to the old pub, he would have done so with the same dazzlingly childlike simplicity as he followed for his guiding star in all such difficulties. He was taking Stanislaus home, and if anyone tried to raise any objections to that manoeuvre—well, Simon Templar’s own floral offering would certainly provide the nucleus of a swell funeral…
But no such objection was made. The streets of Innsbruck maintained their unruffled silence, and stayed benevolently bare: even the distant yipping of the patrolman’s whistle had stopped. And Simon was standing under the shadow of the wall that had been his unarguable destination, glancing keenly up and down the deserted thoroughfare which it bordered.
“This is indubitably the reward of virtue,” he remarked.
Stanislaus went to the top of the wall with one quick heave, and the Saint stooped again. Patricia felt his hands grip round her knees, and she was lifted into the air as if she had been a feather: she had scarcely settled herself on the wall when the Saint was up beside her and down again on the other side like a great grey cat. She saw him dimly in the darkness below as she swung her legs over, and glimpsed the flash of his white teeth; irresistibly she was reminded of another time when he had sent her over a wall, in the first adventure she had shared with him—one lean, strong hand had been stretched up to her exactly as it was stretched up now, only then it was stretched upwards in a flourish of debonair farewell—and a deep and abiding contentment surged through her as she jumped for him to catch her in his arms. He eased her to the ground as lightly as if she were landing in cotton-wool. She heard his voice in a blithe whisper: “Isn’t this the life?”
Above her, on her right, towered the cubical black bulk of the old pub—the Hotel Königshof, hugest and most palatial of all the hotels in Tirol, which the Saint had chosen just twelve hours ago for their headquarters. There, with a strategic eye for possible emergencies of a rather different kind, he had selected a suite on the ground floor with tall casement windows opening directly on to the ornamental gardens, and the fact that it was the only suite of its kind in the building and cost about five pounds a minute could not outweigh its equally unique advantages.
“Straight along in, old dear,” spoke the Saint’s whisper, “and I’ll be right after you with Stanislaus.”
She started off, feeling her way uncertainly between confusedly remembered flower-beds, but he was beside her again in a moment, steering her with an unerring instinct over clear level turf. The windows of their sitting-room were already open, and he found them faultlessly. Inside the room, she heard him opening a door, and when she had found the switch and clicked on the lights the room was empty.
And then he came back through the communicating door of the bedroom, closing it behind him, and gazed at her reproachfully.
“Pat, was that the way I raised you—to let loose all the limes and invite the whole world to gape at us?”
He went over and drew the curtains, and then he turned back, and her rueful excuses were swept away into thin air with his gay laugh.
“In spite of which,” he observed soberly, “it’s better to be too careful than too op
timistic. The results are likely to be less permanently distressing.” He smiled again, and slid an arm along her shoulders. “And now what do you think we could do with a cigarette?”
He pulled out his case and sank luxuriously into a chair. Patricia ranged herself on the arm.
“Are you leaving Stanislaus in the bedroom to cool off?”
Simon nodded.
“He’s there. You can go in and kiss him good night if you like—he sleeps the sleep of the bust. I handcuffed him to the bed and left him to his dreams while we decide what to do with him.”
“And what happens if he wakes up and starts yelling his head off?”
The Saint blew out a long, complacent wisp of smoke.
“Stanislaus won’t yell,” he said. “If there’s one thing that Stanislaus won’t do when he wakes up, it’s yell. He may utter a few subdued bleating cries, but he’ll do nothing noisier than that. I’ve been doing a lot of cerebration over Stanislaus recently, and I’m willing to bet that the din he’ll make will be so deafening that you could use it for the synchronised accompaniment for a film illustrating a chess tournament in a monastery of dumb Trappists. Take that from me.”
A gentle knock sounded from the outer door of the suite, and the Saint peeped at his watch as he unrolled himself from his chair and sauntered across the room. It was five minutes to three—just thirty-five clocked minutes since they had detached themselves from the Breinossl and set out to ventilate their lungs before turning in, on that idle stroll beside the river which was to lead them into such strange and perilous paths. The night had wasted no time. And yet, if Simon Templar had had any inkling of the landslide of skylarking and song that was destined to be poured into his young life before that night’s work had been fully accounted for, even he might have hesitated. Long enough to comb his hair and slick on a clean shirt.
But he did not know. He opened the door three inches, checked up the pleasantly familiar features that surrounded Monty Hayward’s small and sanitary moustache, and pulled him through. Then he slid the bolts cautiously into their sockets, and filtered back into the sitting-room with his cigarette tilting buoyantly up between his lips.
“What ho, troops!” he murmured breezily. “And how do we all feel after our culture physique?”
“I don’t think I want to talk to you,” said Monty. “You’re not nice to know.”
The Saint’s eyebrows slanted at him mockingly.
“Scarface Al Hayward will now tell us about his collection of early Woolworth porcelain,” he drawled. “ ‘I never wanted to drag in politics or any other racket,’ says Scarface Al. ‘Art is the only thing that counts a damn with me. Why can’t you guys ever leave me alone?’ ”
Monty laughed, operating the Saint’s cigarette-case with one hand and a siphon with the other.
“Surely. But still—this sort of thing’s all very well for you, old sportsman, seeing as how you’ve chosen to make it your job, but why d’you want to boot me into it?”
“My dear chap, I thought it would be good for your liver. Besides, you can run awfully fast, and there’s a kind of virginal look about your rear elevation—”
Monty plugged a cushion at him, and went over and sat on the arm of the chair which Patricia had taken.
“Do you allow him to do this sort of thing, Pat?” he asked.
“What sort of thing?” inquired the girl blandly.
“Why—inveigling respectable editors into free fights and kidnappings and what not. Haven’t you noticed what he’s been doing all night? He goes around throwing people into rivers—he grabs people off the streets and runs away with them—he lets his pals be chased all over Europe by hordes of heathen policemen, while he goes and hides—and then he stands around here as happy as a dog with a new flea, and can’t see anything to apologise for. Is that the way you let him behave?”
“Yes,” said Patricia imperturbably.
The Saint picked up a glass and hitched himself on to the table. He blew Patricia a kiss, and looked at Monty Hayward thoughtfully.
“Seriously, old lad,” he said, “we owe you no small hand. You drew the fire like a blinkin’ hero—just as if you’d been trained to it from the kindergarten. But I’m damned sorry if you feel you’ve been landed in a place where you ought not to be. There’s no one I’d rather have with me in a spot of good clean fun, but if you really hear the call of the old hymn-book and hassock—”
Monty flicked the ash into the fireplace.
“It’s not the hymn-book and hassock, you fathead—it’s the Consolidated Press. As I told you at dinner, I’ve done a week’s job in a couple of days, so I reckon I’ve earned five days’ holiday. But that’s not going to help me a lot if at the end of those five days I’m just beginning a fifteen-year stretch in some beastly German clink…Anyway, what’s happened to Stanislaus?”
Simon jerked a thumb towards the bedroom door.
“I dumped him out of the way. When he comes to, he’s going to throw a heap of light on some dark subjects. I was waiting for you to arrive before I did anything to speed up his awakening, so that you could join the interested audience.” He stood up and crushed his cigarette-end into an ash-tray. “And in the circumstances, Monty, that seems to be the very next item on the programme. We’ll get together and hear Stanislaus give tongue, and then we’ll have a little more idea of the scheme of events and prizes in this here rodeo.”
Monty nodded.
“That seems a fairly sound notion,” he said.
The Saint went over and opened the communicating door. He had taken two steps into the room when he felt a distinct draught of cold air fanning his face, and then his eyes had attuned themselves to the darkness, and he saw the rectangle of starlight where the window was. He stepped back without a sound, and his hand caught Monty’s fingers on the electric light switch.
“Not for just a moment, old dear,” he said quietly. “That was the mistake Pat made.”
He vanished into the room, and in a little while Monty heard a faint metallic rattle, and saw the Saint’s figure silhouetted against the oblong of dim light. Simon was closing the window carefully—and Simon knew quite well that that window had already been closed when he dropped Stanislaus on the bed and handcuffed him there. But the Saint was perfectly calm about it. He drew the curtains across the window, and turned, and his voice spoke evenly out of the dark.
“The notion was very sound, Monty—very sound indeed,” he said. “Only it was a little late. You can put the light on now.”
Light came on, drenching down in a sudden blazing flood from the central panel in the ceiling and the alabaster-shaded brackets along the walls. It quenched itself in the deep green curtains and the priceless carpet that had been fitted to a queen’s bedchamber, and lay whitely over the spotless linen of the carved oak bed. In the middle of that snowy expanse, the little man looked queerly black and twisted.
The ivory hilt of a stiletto stood out darkly from the stained cloth of his shirt, and his upturned eyes were wide and staring. Even as they looked at him, his right hand sagged lower over the side of the bed, and the attaché case that dangled from his wrist settled on the floor with a dull thud.
CHAPTER TWO:
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WAS UNREPENTANT AND THE PARTY WAS CONSIDERABLY PEPPED UP
1
Simon unlocked the handcuffs and dropped them into his pocket. He was far too accustomed to the sight of sudden and violent death to be disturbed in any conventional way by what had happened, but even so, a parade of ghostly icicles was crawling down his spine. Death that struck so swiftly and mercilessly was just a little more than he had expected to encounter so early in the festivities. It was a threat and a challenge that could not be misunderstood.
“How did it happen?” Patricia asked, breaking the silence in its sixth second, and the Saint smiled.
“In the simplest possible way,” he said. “A member of the ungodly trailed us home, and let himself in here while we were gargling in the nex
t room. Whoever he was, his sleuthing form is alpha plus—I was keeping one ear pricked for him all the way, and I never heard a thing. But if you ask me the reason why Stanislaus was bumped, that’ll want a bit more thinking over.”
The actual physical demise of the little man left him unmoved. They had not known each other long enough to become devoted comrades, and it was doubtful, in any case, whether the little man would ever have been inclined to permit such an affection to burgeon in his breast. The Saint, whose assessment of character was intuitive and instantaneous, judged him to be a bloke whose passing would leave the world singularly unbereaved.
And yet that same unimportant murder wrote a sentence into the story which the Saint would read in any language.
Across the bed, his clear blue gaze levelled into the eyes of Monty Hayward with a glimmer of new mockery, and that reckless half-smile still rested on his lips. On to his last speech he tacked one crackling question:
“Anyone say I wasn’t right?”
“Right about what?” Monty snapped.
“About abducting Stanislaus,” came the Saint’s crisp reply. “You both thought I was crazy—thought I was jumping to conclusions, and jumping a damned sight too far. But since there was nothing else you could do, you gave the jump a trial. Now tell me I haven’t given you the goods!”
Monty shrugged.
“The goods are there all right,” he said. “But what are we supposed to do with them?”
“Get on with what’s left of our sound notion,” said the Saint. “Carry on finding out as much as we can about Stanislaus—then we may have some more to talk about.”
Already he was examining the little man’s attaché case. His first glance showed him that the leather had been half-ripped away, doubtless by some other sharp instrument in the hands of the recent visitor, and then he saw what was inside, and grasped the reason for the bag’s extraordinary weight. The little attaché case was nothing but a flimsy camouflage: inside it was a blued steel box, and it was to this box itself that the chain was riveted through a neat circular hole cut in the leather covering. A couple of shrewd slits with a penknife fetched the covering away altogether, and the metal box was comprehensively revealed—one of the compactest and solidest little portable safes that the Saint had ever seen.
The Saint's Getaway (The Saint Series) Page 3