Saint's Getaway (19 page)

“What’s wrong with sitting where we
are?” replied Monty
reasonably. “We aren’t getting, into
mischief. You could spend
several hours working out how you’re going to get me across
the next frontier and take the jewels with you as
well. And by
the way, where
are
the
ruddy things?”

“They’ll be waiting for us at the
poste
restante
in Cologne—
where moth and rust may corrupt, but Rudolfs
will have a
job to break through and steal.”

Monty scratched his head.

“I’m still trying to get that
clear,” he said. “What have you
done with
them?”

“Bunged ‘em into the post, laddie—all done up in brown
paper, with bits of string and sealing wax and
everything. As
I told Rudolf. They’re on their way now—they might even
be
on this very train—but there’s no
detective on earth who could
prove
now that I’ve ever had anything to do with them, even if he thought of looking
for them in the right place. In this game
the great idea is to have brains,” said the Saint modestly.

Monty digested the pronouncement with
becoming gravity.
And then Patricia stood up.

“Let’s go, boy,” she said recklessly; and the Saint
hauled
himself up with a laugh.

“And shall we dally with the archdeacon
or gambol with the gun artist?”

He framed the question in a tone that required
no answer,
balancing himself easily in the swaying carriage, with a
ciga
rette between
his lips and one hand shielding his lighter—he
was as unanswerable as a laughing Whirlwind with hell-for-
leather blue eyes. He was not even thinking of
alternatives.

And then he saw the hole that had been bored
through the
partition on his left—just an inch or two below the mesh
of
the luggage grid.

The raw, white edges of it seemed to blaze
into his vision out
of the smooth, drab surface of the varnished woodwork, pin
ning him
where he stood in a sudden hush of corrosive immo
bility. Then his
gaze flicked down to the half-dozen fresh white
splinters that lay on the seat, and the
smile in his eyes hard
ened to a narrow
glitter of steel.

“Or should we just sit here and behave
ourselves?” he mur
mured; and the change in his voice was so
contrasting that the
other two stared at him.

Monty recovered the use of his tongue first.

“That’s the most sensible thing I’ve
heard you say for a long
time,” he remarked, as if he still doubted whether he should
believe his ears. “You can’t be feeling
well.”
 

“But,
Simon——
”

Patricia broke in with a different
incredulity. And the
Saint dropped a hand on her shoulder.

His other hand went out in a grim gesture
that travelled
straight
to the hole in the partition.

“Let’s keep our heads, Pat.” The
smile was filtering back into
his voice, but it was so gentle that only the
most sensitive ear
could have picked it out. “Monty’s the moderating
influence—
and he may be right. We don’t want to make things
unneces
sarily difficult. There’s a long journey in front of us, and I’m
not sure
that I should object to a little rest. I’m not so young
as I
was.”

He subsided heavily into his corner with a
profound sigh;
and
the visible part of his audience tore their eyes from the tell-tale perforation
in the wall and looked at him in the tense
dawning
of comprehension.

“Good-night, my children,” said
the Saint sleepily.

But he was reaching to his feet again as he
said it, and there
was
not a trace of sleepiness in one inch of the movement. It
was like the measured straightening of a bent
spring. And it
was just as he came dead upright that a dull thud seemed
to
bump itself on the partition, clearly
audible above the mo
notonous
rattling of the wheels.

“And happy dreams,” said the Saint, in the softest of
all
whispers.

He slid out soundlessly into the corridor.
Down towards the
end of it he saw the back of a man lurching from side to
side
in a clumsy
attempt to run, and instinctively the Saint’s step quickened. Then he glanced
sidelong into the
next compart
ment
as he passed it—he was merely satisfying a professional
desire to see the other end of the listening-hole
which had
tapped through into his
private business, but what he saw there
made him pull up with his
fingers hooking round the edge of
the sliding
door. Without another thought he shot it back
along its grooves and let himself in. He went in quietly and without
fear, for the eyes of the man who was crumpled up in
the far corner looked at him with the calm
greeting of one
who has already seen
beyond the Curtain. It was Josef Krauss,
with one hand clutched to his side and the grey pallor of death
in his face.

VIII.
   
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR CONTINUED TO BE

DISCREET, AND MONTY HAYWARD
IMPROVED

THE SHINING HOUR

SIMON TEMPLAR pulled the door shut behind him and went
over to
the dying man. He started to fumble with the buttons
of the stained black
waistcoat, but Krauss only smiled.

“Lassen Sie es nur,”
he said
huskily. “It is not worth the
time. The old fox has finished his
journey.”

Simon nodded. The first glance had told him
that there was
nothing he could do. He sat down beside the stricken
thief and
supported
him with an arm round his shoulders; and Krauss
looked at him with the same calm and patient eyes.

“I have only seen you once before, Herr Templar. That was
when you saved me from the screw.” A shiver
passed over the
man’s bulky frame.
“If I had lived, I should have repaid that
kindness by robbing you. You know that?”

“Does it matter?” asked the Saint.

Krauss shook his head. There were beads of
perspiration
starting
through the pink grease paint on his face, and each
breath cost him an effort.

“Now the time is too short for these
things,” he said.

Simon eased him up a few inches, settling him
more com
fortably into the corner. He knew that the end could be no
more than a few minutes away, and he had time to spare. The
man who
had fired the shot, whose back he had seen scuttling
down the corridor,
could wait those few minutes for his turn.
However the killer
might choose to dispose of himself meanwhile, he would still be available when
he was wanted—unless
he elected to step right off the train and
break his neck. And
the Saint would watch the old fox creep into the last
covert,
according to the rules of the game as he knew them. It had
never
occurred to him to refuse the unspoken appeal that
had leapt at him out of the doomed man’s
weary eyes as he
sidled that casual glance
into the compartment; and yet he
never
guessed on what a strange twist of the trail that unthink
ing chivalry was to lead him.

He looked at the litter of curled wood
shavings on the opposite seat, and then up at the partition.

“I suppose you heard all you wanted
to?” he said.

The reply came as a surprise to him, in a wry
grin that
warped its way across the man’s face of bitter fatalism.

“I heard nothing,
mein lieber
Freund.
Marcovitch heard— that little cub of the young jackal. If my gun
had not stuck in
my pocket you would have found him here instead of
me.”

“He was listening here when you found
him?”

“Ja.
And I think he has
heard too much. You had better kill
him quickly, Herr Templar—he will be
troublesome.”

Krauss coughed painfully; and there was blood
on his hand
kerchief. Then he raised his eyes and saw the uniform of
an
other ticket inspector in the corridor outside, and he seemed
to smile
cynically under his make-up. As the door grated
open again he pulled
himself together with an effort of will
that must have been
almost super-human. It was the most eerie
performance that the
Saint had ever seen, and it left him dumb
with wonder at the
magnificent sardonic courage of it.

Krauss jerked himself almost upright in his corner and sat there
unsupported, with his hands clasped calmly on his lap.
He met the Saint’s eyes expressionlessly, and spoke in a voice
that rang out oddly with the iron strength of his
self-control—
a voice that hadn’t the
minutest tremor in it—as if he were
merely
setting the trivial capstone on an ephemeral argument.

“After all,” he said, “when one is confronted with
a sum
mons, one can still pay one’s debts
with a good grace.”

Simon groped around for his ticket and offered
it to be
clipped.

And Josef Krauss did the same. That was the
one simple act
with which he paid his debt in the only way that was left
to
him. He did it with an unflinching rendering of the benevolent
and rather
fatuous smile that belonged to his disguise, playing
out the last lines
of his part without a fault, while the hot stab
of death seared
bitterly into his lungs.

He received his ticket back, and beamed at
the inspector.

“We come at half past-eleven to K
ö
ln,
nicht wahr?”

“At eleven thirty-eight,
mein
Herr.”

“So.
Now I am very tired.
Will you have to disturb me at
Wurzburg and Mainz?”

A note rustled in his hand, and the inspector accepted it
graciously.

“If you will allow me to keep your
ticket until after we have
left Mainz,
hochehrw
ü
rdener
Herr,
I will see that your sleep is not interrupted.”

“Herzlichen Dank!”

The official bowed his way out
respectfully—he had pocketed
a tip that would have been notable at any
time, and which be
came almost an epoch-making event when the donor’s garb
confessed
to a vocation whose members are rarely able to com
pete with
millionaires in purchasing the small luxuries of
travel. The door closed after him; and
Simon turned slowly
from watching him go,
and saw the dour fatalism grinning
again
from Krauss’s eyes.

“At least, my death will put you to no
inconvenience,” he
said.

Then the supernatural endurance which had
shored him up
through those last minutes seemed to fall away as if the
kingpins had been wiped out of it, and he sagged back with a little
sigh.

Simon leaned over and dried a thin trickle of
blood from
one corner of the relaxed mouth. The glazing eyes stared
at him
mockingly, and Krauss fought for a breath. He spoke once
more, but
his voice was so low that the Saint only just caught
the words.

“Sehen Sie gut nach . .
.
dem
blauen Diamont…
.
Er
ist … wirklich… preislos
…”

Then he was silent.

Simon Templar rose quietly to his feet. He
put out a steady
hand and pressed the lids down over the derisive eyes that
had
gone suddenly blind and rigid in their orbits; and then he
looked
round and saw Monty Hayward in the doorway. Pa
tricia Holm came in
behind him.

“You know, Simon,” said Monty, after
a moment’s eloquent
stillness,
“if you show me a few more stiffs, I believe I shall be
gin to get quite used to it.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the
Saint laconically.