Saint's Getaway (22 page)

He kept his hand in his pocket and stared out
of a window at the finest angle that he could manage. Instinct alone told
him that
the stoppage had nothing to do with any ordinary
incident of the
journey—it was the hint that he had been wait
ing for, the zero
signal that strung up his nerves to the last
brittle ounce of
expectation. Beside him, the girl was saying something; but he never had the
vaguest idea what it was. He
was listening for an intimation of how the
typhoon would
burst, knowing beyond all possibility of evasion that the
break-up
was as inevitable as the collapse of a house of cards.
For a moment he felt
like a man who has just seen the tail of
a slow fuse
vanishing into a cask of gunpowder: the uncanny hush that had settled down
after the train pulled up seemed to
span out to the cracking brink of
eternity. He heard the sibi
lant hiss of the Westinghouse valves, the subdued mutter of
voices from a dozen compartments, the distant
clank of a
coupling shaking down into equilibrium; but his brain was
striving to tune through those normal sounds to
the first whis
per of the
abnormal—speculating whether it would come as a
babel of enraged throats or the unequivocal stammer of artil
lery.

Then a door was flung open up at the
northward end of
the
carriage, and the heavy tread of official-sounding boots
made his heart miss a beat. Out of the corner of
his eye he saw
two men in uniform
advancing down the passage. They
stopped
at the first compartment and barked a question; and
the chattering of
the group of Italians farther up died away abruptly. A deeper stillness lapped
down on the perspective,
and through it
Monty heard the question repeated and the
boots moving on.

He felt the girl gripping his arm and heard
her speaking
again.

“Say, don’t you Englishmen ever get
excited? Somebody’s pulled the communication cord. Boy, isn’t that
thrilling?”

Monty nodded. The officials came nearer,
interrogating each compartment as they reached it. One of them turned
aside to
accost him with the same standardized inquiry, and Monty schooled his features
to the requisite expression of
sheep-like repudiation.

“Nein
—
ich habe nichts
geh
ö
rt.”

The inquisition passed on, and the group of Italians trailed
gaping after them. A fresh buzz of conversation
broke out
along the carriage.

Monty found the girl eyeing him indignantly.

“Were you trying to kid me you didn’t
speak German?” she
demanded.

He faced her shamelessly.

“I must have forgotten it for the
moment.”

“Anyway,” she affirmed, “I’m
going to see what it’s all about
This is much too good to miss.”

Monty looked at her steadily. He realized
that he had put
his foot in it from nearly every conceivable aspect, but
it was
too late to draw back.

“I should keep out of it if I were
you,” he said quietly, and there was that in his tone which ought to have
told her that he
was
in earnest.

He walked past her without giving her time to
reply, and
went through to the tiny lobby at the end of the coach.
It was
pure intuition, again, which told him that the stopping of
the train
must have its repercussions outside—whoever had
given the alarm. He
opened the door at one side and looked
out, but he could
discover no exterior symptoms of a disturb
ance; then he crossed
to the other side, and the first thing he
saw was Simon Templar
skidding elegantly down the embank
ment towards the trees. A second later
he saw that Patricia
Holm was already at the foot of the slope: the
Saint was tak
ing
his time, glancing back over his shoulder as he went.

It was Monty Hayward that the Saint was
looking for, and
the
sight he had of him was a considerable relief.

“If you stayed well back among that
timber, Pat, you might
live a long time,” he murmured. “I
don’t think Marcovitch’ll
run the risk of taking pot shots at us now,
but it’s best to be on
the safe side.”

He waved to the figure in the doorway and
strolled along the bottom of the embankment to meet him. It was not en
tirely
typical of the Saint that he scorned to follow his own
advice and take
cover, but Simon was beginning to feel that
he had done a lot of work
that day with his rudder to the wind,
and that unheroic position had lost a
great deal of its charm.
He waited until Monty had scrambled down to
the low level
before he turned off and steered him through a narrow
path
into the shelter of the wood; and his recklessness was justified
by the
fact that there was no more shooting.

“I’m afraid this is good-bye to our
luggage,” said the Saint, by way of explanation, “but let’s think
what we’ve saved in
death duties.”

“Was it as bad as that?” asked
Monty; and Simon laughed.

“I reckon a swell time was had by all.”

They came out into a small clearing around the
roots of a
giant elm, and at the same tune Patricia Holm threaded her
way through the shrubbery on the opposite side and joined
them under
the tree.

From where they stood they could get a strip
view of the
train without being seen. An assortment of passengers
from
various
carriages had climbed out and scattered themselves
along the permanent way; a few of them were dislocating their
necks in the attempt to peer through into the
depths of the
wood, but the majority
were heading excitedly down to add
their
personalities to the knot of gesticulating orators who
were thumping the air beside the brake van. The
principal performers appeared to be Marcovitch, the two uniformed
officials, and the lady with the Pekinese.
Flourishing their arms wildly towards the unresponsive heavens on the rare
occasions
when words failed them,
they were engaged in shouting each
other
down with a tireless vociferousness that would have glad
dened the heart of an argumentative Frenchman. It
was several
minutes before the lady in
black bombazine began to turn
purple for lack of breath; and then the
Pekinese, seizing its
chance, rushed into the
conference with a series of strident
yaps
which worthily maintained the standard of uproar. Si
mon gathered that Marcovitch was keeping his end up
with
no great difficulty. His voice,
when it rose above the oratorio,
could
be heard speaking passionately of bandits, thieves, robbers, murderers, battles,
perils, pursuits, escapes, and his own
remarkable
perspicacity and valour; and the generous panto
mime of his hands
supplied everything that was drowned by the persistence of the other speakers.
From time to time the
other members of his
party chimed in with their corroboration.

“That little skunk’ll qualify himself
for a medal before he’s
through,” said the Saint fascinatedly. “He’s the
loveliest liar
since Ulysses.”

“What was the truth of it?” asked
Monty.

Simon put his hands on his hips and continued
to gaze up
at the drama on the line.

“We were bounced off,” he said
simply. “Marcovitch rode
us out on a rail. I’m not bragging about it.
He’d cleaned up
the van when I got there—and my guess was right The
jewels were travelling with us. His pockets were stuffed with ‘em, and
I saw a
diamond he’d dropped wedged between the floor
boards to make it a
cinch. And right there when I blew in it
was a choice of death
or get from under. We got from under—
just.”

The smile on the Saint’s lips was as
superficial as a reflection
in burnished bronze. There was something of
the implacable
immobility of a watching Indian about him as he stood at
gaze with
his eyes narrowed against the sun. The staccato sen
tences of his
synopsis broke off like a melody cut short in the
middle of a bar, leaving his listeners in
midair; but the con
clusion was carved deep
into the unforgetting contours of his
face. He wasn’t complaining. He
wasn’t saying a word about
the run of the
cards. He wasn’t even elaborating one single vaporous prophecy about what might
happen when he and Marcovitch got together again over a bottle of vodka to yarn
over old times. Not just at that moment But the indomitable
purpose of it was etched into every facet of his
unnatural qui
escence, sheathing him
like a skin of invisible steel. And once
again the parting riddle of Josef Krauss went ticking through
the
core of his stillness like a gramophone record that has
jammed its needle into one hard-worn groove… .

And then the gas picnic up on the track
began to sort itself
out. One of the officials tore himself away
from the centre of
rhetoric and started to urge the passengers back into
their car
riages. The empurpled lady lifted her yapping paladin
tenderly
into the last coach, and was in her turn assisted
steatopygously
upwards. The second official, brandishing a large
notebook
vaguely in his left hand, pressed the still voluble
Marcovitch
after her. Gradually the train re-absorbed its jabbering
debris
like a large and sedate vacuum cleaner. The locomotive, succumbing at
last to the force of overwhelming example, let
out a mighty cloud of
steam and wagged its tail triumphantly.
Somebody blew a
whistle; and the northbound express resumed
its interrupted
journey.

Simon Templar turned away from the emptying
landscape
with an
imperceptible shrug. He had not expected any im
promptu search party to be organized. A trio of armed and desperate mail
bandits would have very few attractions as a
quarry to a trainload of agitated tourists, and transcontinental
expresses cannot be left lying about the track
while their pas
sengers play a game of hare and hounds. The incident
would be reported at the next station, twenty miles up the line, and
the whole responsibility turned over to the
police. And the get
away would have
to find its own way on.

The Saint threw himself down on a bank of
grass, and lay
back with his hands behind his head, staring up into the
sky
through the soft green tracery of the leaves.

“After all,” he said profoundly,
“life is just a bowl of cher
ries.”
Patricia leaned on
the trunk of the great tree and kicked at
a stone.

“You might have borrowed Monty’s gun and
plugged Marcovitch
while he was talking,” she said wistfully.

“Sure. And then I don’t suppose they’d
even have had to
bother to turn out his pockets. The minute he became horizontal
he’d ‘ve
cascaded diamonds like a dream come true. I
don’t know how you
feel about it, old girl, but I should just
hate those jools to fall
into the hands of the police. It might
be kind of difficult
to establish our claim and get ‘em back.”

Monty Hayward produced a pipe and began to
scrape it
out with his penknife.

“Getting them back from Marcovitch,”
he observed, “will
be comparatively child’s play.”

“As Simon said,” murmured Patricia
softly, “it seems a lot
of fuss to make over one little blue
diamond.”

She spoke almost without thinking; and after
she had
spoken there was a silence.

And then, very firmly and distinctly, the
Saint said:
“Hell! …”

“I know how you feel about it, old
man,” said Monty Hay-
ward sympathetically; and there he stopped,
with the rest of his speech drying up in a hiatus of blank bewilderment. For
the Saint
had rolled over on one elbow in a sudden leap of
volcanic energy, and
his eyes were blazing.

“But that’s just what you don’t
know!” he cried. “We’ve
been bounced off a train—chucked out on
our ears and darned glad to be let off as lightly as that. And why? God of
battles,
what have we been thinking about all this time? What have
we
been daydreaming about Rudolf?”