Saint's Getaway (25 page)

“Ihr Name?”

“Franz Schneider.”

“Adresse?”

“N
ü
rnberg,
Juliusstrasse, seibzehn.”

The police car rushed up alongside, and the
officer stepped
on the running board and called out a volley of
instructions.
He turned and shouted to Simon as the driver let in the
clutch.

“Wenn wir diese Verbrecher fangen,
behommen Sie vielleicht
eine hohe Belohnung!”

Simon slewed round in his seat and watched the
police car vanishing in a cloud of dust.

And then, very gravely, he leaned forward and
engaged the
gears.
…

They had travelled less than a quarter of a
mile up the road
before Monty Hayward could contain himself no longer. He
sat
forward on his perch, that imperturbable and law-abiding
gentleman,
and flung the bruised fragments of his conscience
over the horizon with
a stentorian bellow of jubilation that
drowned even the
ear-splitting racket of the six-wheeler’s en
trails.

“Kolossal!”
he bawled
ecstatically. “Tremendous affair! They
legged it over the
fields, they did, and we nearly ran over one
of them. Tally-ho!
And if they’re caught we may qualify for a
reward.
Yoi!”
Monty
let out another whoop of rhapsody that should have made the welkin turn pale.
“Well, dear old sports
man and skipper—where shall we go and file
our claim?”

“Treuchtlingen is the next stop, dear old
mate and bloke,”
said the Saint, raising his voice more
modestly above the uproar of the engine. “They must have kept Marcovitch
there to
get his statement, but the train wouldn’t wait for him.
He’ll
have to wait for another—and we might be in time to buy him
a
bouquet!”

2

The lorry crashed on to the northwest at a
sonorous twenty-
five miles an hour; and Simon Templar settled himself as
com
fortably as he could on the hard seat and pondered the prob
lem of the two girls behind.

He knew exactly what he had taken on, even if
he refused
to allow the knowledge to depress him. Hairbreadth
odysseys
had been made through hostile country before—by desperate
men whose superlatively virile strength and speed and cunning
kept them
moving in a tireless rush that never let up until
sanctuary was reached.
He could remember no similar in
stance in which a woman had taken part. It
had been tried
often enough, and always it had been the woman who had
proved the
fugitive’s undoing. Always it had been the woman’s inferior wieldiness that had
damped the spark of ruthless prim
itive momentum without which no such
enterprise could ever
succeed. It was she who negatived all the
man’s resources of
strength and speed and left him with cunning as his only
asset;
and every time his wits had failed to carry the load.

Simon Templar reckoned himself something
unique in the
way of outlaws, and his restless imagination was bearing
around the
handicap as optimistically as if it had been thrust
upon him in a friendly
game of hide-and-seek. One thing at
least was certain, and that was that
Patricia Holm couldn’t
ride into Treuchtlingen on the lorry. Quite
apart from the risk
that they might be stopped again and subjected to a
search,
the rare spectacle of a Bond Street three-piece crawling out
from under
the tarpaulin of a six-wheeler in the middle of
the main street could
scarcely escape attention. Marcovitch would doubtless have given a photographic
description of her
in
which the musical-comedy American disguise that had sailed
her through the barriers at Munich Hauptbahnhof
must have
received due credit;
therefore it was time for something bright
and new to be thought up, and the Saint drove with one eye
on the road and the other questing for his opportunity.

From time to time the gentle undulations of
the scene gave
him a vista of the Altm
ü
hl
winding like a silver snake be
tween the meadows; and twelve miles farther
on it was that
same river which provided him with his solution. It
caught
his wandering eye through a girdle of trees that ringed round
a
sheltered fold in the broad valley, and if he had not been
in Germany
he might have believed for a moment that some
sorcery had
transported him into a pastoral of Ancient Greece. The glimpse lasted for less
than a second, but it looked prom
ising enough. He ran the truck another
hundred yards up the road, kicked it out of gear, and jumped lightly down to
the
tarmac.

“Hold the fort for a minute, Monty,”
he said. “I’ve just seen
a girl.”

Monty Hayward rolled over and grabbed the
wheel. The
elevation of his eyebrows was a five-furlong speech in
itself.

“You’ve just seen a
what?”
he
blurted, and the Saint chuck
led.

“A girl,” said the Saint. “But
she’s much too nice for a mar
ried man like you.”

He flagged Monty a debonair au revoir, and
slipped hopefully off the road down a shallow bank that led round towards
the hollow
where he had seen his vision. It really was a very
charming little scene;
and in any other circumstances, not
being afflicted with the Teutonic
temperament, he could have
waxed poetic over it for some time. It says
much for his stern
devotion to duty that he was back within ten minutes, sad
dened to
think that the serpent of Eden would probably have viewed such vandalism as his
with loathing, but bringing with him nevertheless a large bundle which he
tossed into Monty’s
arms before he climbed back into the cockpit.

The lorry groaned in its intestines and moved
on; and Monty Hayward gazed at the trophies on his lap and appeared to sigh.

“You don’t mean to say these are her
clothes?” he croaked,
and felt that the difficulty of making
himself heard robbed
the utterance of much of its delicacy.

“I’m afraid they are,” answered the
Saint, with similar emo
tions. “And her girl friend’s as well.
You see, she wasn’t using
them… . And Greta was divine, Monty. It’d
be worth taking
up this
Freik
ö
rperkultur
just on the chance of meeting her
again.”

Another three miles nearer Treuchtlingen,
when he decided
that they were temporarily safe from any immediate
pursuit,
he braked the lorry again beside a small spinney and
hopped
out. The road was clear; and he threw back the tarpaulins and
lifted
Patricia down to the grass verge. Nina Walden followed
her unconcernedly,
and the Saint reclaimed his booty and
dumped it into Patricia’s hands.

“You two are going to be a couple of
Wanderv
ö
gel
with
great open
faces,” he said. “Take this stuff into the jungle and get on with it.
The things you’re wearing will go in the ruck
sacks. And don’t carry
on as if you were dressing to go to a
dance—we can’t stay here more than a
week.”

His lady stared suspiciously at the collection
of garments
which he had thrust upon her.

“But where did you get these things
from?” she demanded;
and Simon propelled her towards the coppice
with a laugh.

“Now don’t waste time asking indiscreet
questions. I found
them lying in a field, and the actress never told the
bishop a smoother one than that.”

He paced up and down beside the lorry,
smoking a ciga
rette, while he waited for the girls to return. An open
touring
car jolted past with its springs labouring under the avoirdu
pois of a
healthy Prussian commercial traveller and his Frau,
but beyond that the
prospect had no reason to complain that
only man was vile. It
was an almost miraculous stroke of for
tune for the Saint,
and he rendered thanks accordingly. The accident which had enabled him to
misdirect the pursuit had
been a bonanza in itself: it meant that the
plight of the truck’s
crew might not be discovered for several
hours, and meantime
the hue and cry would be spreading away at right angles to
the course he was
taking. The last place in which any policeman
would
expect to see him was Treuchtlingen—the very town
from which the alarm had emanated. The hunt would
be de
ploying westward to intercept
him at the French frontier, but
Simon
Templar was not going that way.

His cigarette had still half an inch to go
when Patricia
Holm emerged from the spinney and presented herself for
his inspection.

“If we’ve got the rest of a week to
spare,” she said blandly,
“I think I might have a smoke too.”

Simon offered his packet. She had put on a
brief leather skirt
and a plain cotton jumper, and her legs were bare to the
rawhide
sandals. Her nose was definitely shiny, and the fair hair was pushed carelessly
back from her forehead as if the
wind had been rumpling it all day. She had
even remembered
to take off her gold wrist watch; and the Saint noted that
touch
with a slow smile of appreciation.

“There isn’t much more I can teach you,
old Pat,” he said.

Nina Walden joined them a few moments later,
and her
garb was much the same. Simon showed her how to adjust the
rucksack;
and then he took her in his arms and kissed her
heartily. For at least
three seconds she was too thunderstruck
to move, and then her
voice returned.

“Are you getting fresh?” she
demanded huskily; and Simon
Templar laughed.

“I was just taking off some of your
lipstick, darling. It’s not
being worn on great open faces these days,
and it seemed a shame to
mess
up your hankie.”

He whirled expeditiously up to the cockpit
and sat on the
edge of it to give his orders, leaning over with one
forearm on
his
knee and his eyes dancing.

“You two’ll have to make it on foot from
here—it’s under
seven kilometres by the milestones, and you couldn’t have
a
better day for a walk. Besides which, this lorry alibi mayn’t last
forever, and we don’t all need to ride in one basket with
the eggs.
Go into Treuchtlingen and look for the station. Pat goes into the nearest
Konditorei
and buys herself a cup of chocolate to pass the time; Nina, you shunt into
the
Bahnhof
and take a return ticket to Ansbach. Slide through the door
marked
Damen
and make yourself at home. Change back into
your ordinary
clothes, wrap the other things into a parcel with some brown paper which you’ll
get on the way, wait till you
hear the next train through, cross the line,
and walk out the
other side as if you owned the railroad—giving up the
return
half of
your ticket. All clear so far?”

“I think so,” said the American
girl slowly. “But what’s it
all for?”

“I’ve got a job for you,” said the
Saint steadily. “You wanted
the complete story of those crown jewels, and
this is part of it.
Your next move is the police station. You’re a perfectly
honest
American journalist on vacation who’s got wind of the at
tempted
mail robbery and general commotion. We must know definitely what’s happened to
Marcovitch and his troupe of
performing gorillas, and there’s only one way
to find out. Someone’s got to jazz into the lion’s den—and ask.”

Simon looked down at her quietly; but the
hell-for-leather
twinkle
was still dancing way down in his eyes. Sitting up there
beside him, Monty Hayward began to understand the
spell
which the Saint must have woven
around those cynical young
freebooters
of death who had followed him in the old days—
the days which Monty Hayward knew only from hearsay and
almost legendary record. He began to understand
the fanatical
loyalty which must have
welded that little band together when they flung their quixotic defiance in the
teeth of Law and Underworld alike, when every man’s hand was against them and
only the inspired devilry of their leader stood
between them
and the wrath of a drab
civilization. And it came to Monty
Hayward,
that phlegmatic and unimpressionable man, in a
sudden absurd flash of blind surrender, that if ever that little band
should be gathered once more in the sound of the trumpet he would ask for no
prouder fate than to be among their
company.
…