Saint's Getaway (26 page)

“I’m not asking you to do anything
disreputable,” said the Saint. “As a reporter, it’s your job to get
all the news; and if
you happen to share some of it with a friend—well, who’s going
to lose their sleep?”

“I should worry. But when do I get the
rest of the story?”

“When we’ve got it ourselves. I’ve
promised you shall have it, and I shan’t forget. But this has got to come first
I told you
I’d help you as much as you helped me. I wouldn’t give
you
the run-around for worlds—I couldn’t afford to. We need that
piece of
news. It’s the one thing that’ll lead us to the only cli
max that’s
any use to anyone. If we lose Marcovitch, I lose
my crown jewels—and your story’s up the
pole. You’re the only
one who can save the
game. You’re a journalist—will you go
on
and journalize?”

The others went still and silent in a
heart-stopping moment of revelation. The preposterous surmise that had been
tapping
at the
doors of their belief ever since the Saint began speaking
burst in on them as an eternal fact. And with it
came a real
ization of all that hung
from the Saint’s madness and that
crazy
instant of inspiration back in the woods by the railroad.

The Saint had never been thinking of defeat.
With the hunt
hard behind him and a price on his head, when he should
have been
thinking of nothing but escape, he had still been
able to play with a
madcap idea that fortune had thrown into
his path. There was
something about it which stunned all logic
and all questions—a
sense of the joyously inevitable which swept every sane criticism aside. It
stirred something in the
heart which was beyond reach of reason, like
the cheering of
a thousand throats or the swing of a regiment moving as
one
man—something that was rooted in the core of all human impulse, a
primeval passion of victory that lifted the head
higher and sent the
blood tingling through the veins… .
And the Saint was
almost laughing.

“Will you try it?” he asked.

And Nina Walden said, with her marvellous
amethyst eyes
full upon his: “I can do that for you—Saint.”

The Saint reached down and put out a brown
hand.

“Good girl… . And when you’ve got the
dope, all you
have to do is rustle back to the
Konditorei
where
you left Pat.
Monty and I will park the lorry and be around. We’ll find
you
somewhere. And
it’ll be a swell story.” He smiled. “And thanks,
Nina,” he said.

The girl smiled back.

Then the Saint spilled over into his seat. He
caught Patricia
up to him and kissed her on the lips. The six-wheeler’s
engine
raced with a protesting scream, and the huge truck jolted
on up the
road.

X.
    
HOW
SIMON
 
TEMPLAR DISCOURSED ABOUT

 
PROHIBITION,
AND
 
PATRICIA
 
HOLM
 
WALKED

LIKE A PRINCESS

SIMON drove the lorry clear through Treuchdingen and out
the other
side. Pressed hard on its elephantine second gear, it
rumbled through the
streets with a din that shook the town
on its foundations,
and several scores of the population
turned away from their jobs with
representative emotions to see it go. Simon Templar had no objection. That part
of the
journey was
one of those master strokes of strategy which mul
tiplied in his fertile inventiveness like a colony of rabbits with
their souls in the business. He had plenty of time
to give it
rein, and the system of
tactics tickled his sense of fun. Two po
licemen had marked his noisy passage; and if the theft of the
lorry were prematurely discovered their statements
ought to
give the pursuit a fresh
start in the wrong direction. What
ever
happened, Treuchtlingen would still be the last place on
earth in which the hue and cry would search for
them.

He went eight kilometers beyond Treuchtlingen
on the
Ansback road, and abandoned the truck within sight of a cross
roads which
would annoy the pursuit still more. They doubled back across country, for
there were other travellers on
the road, and the alarm would soon be
spreading like a forest
fire.

“This police force will just hate me
before I’m through,”
said the Saint lightly; and then he laughed.
“What’ll you do
with your share of the boodle, Monty?”

For once it never occurred to Monty Hayward
to question
whether that share would ever materialize.

“I haven’t had time to think about
it,” he said. “I suppose
I shall spend most of it on
fares—trying to keep out of
jail.”

The list of crimes for which he could be tried
and almost certainly convicted had faded into the dim outskirts of his
consciousness like a tally of old scars. The prospects for his
future had
gone the same way, Like a distant appointment
with the dentist. And
yet he knew, from the swift sidelong
glance which answered his thoughtless
remark, that the Saint had not forgotten. The Saint was thinking of the same
thing,
even then.

Monty fell into a kind of reverie as he
walked. He knew
that the Saint was quietly searching for a scheme that
would
clear up the tangle and allow Monty Hayward at least to go
free, and
for a while he allowed himself to fancy that even
such a forlorn hope
as that might be carried through by a man
to whom no hope
seemed too forlorn for a dice with the gods.
Suppose the miracle
had been worked, and the hue and cry
spumed past him like a turning tide,
leaving him to dry his
wings far up on the shore? … Then there
would be silence
for a week or so, broken at length by a characteristic message
of salutation to announce that a worthy proportion of
the boodle,
mysteriously converted into sterling, had been
credited to him
through his bank—and tell Ann to have a large
plateful of those
cakes hot from the oven for him next time
he called. That would
be the Saintly method—a conclusive share-out that precluded all possibility of
refusal. And an un-regenerate patchwork of a letter in which every vigorous
line
would bring back the tang of a ridiculous glamour… . And
what then?
The Consolidated Press, the snug office, the regular
hours, the
respectable week-ends, the everlasting discussion
or rough-neck plots
with swan-necked authors, the barometric
eye on the
circulation figures every Monday. Or an even dead
lier retirement, with
a sports car and a yacht for toys, Medi
terranean summers,
luxury cruises, and the bromidic gossip
of other douce,
unambitious parasites who had the whole world for their playground and could
only see it as a race track or a tennis court. In either alternative, the same end
less quest
for a meaning in life that he had come near to
grasping on one wild
drive through the Bavarian hills. It gave him a queer feeling of emptiness and
futility; and he said very little more during that walk back into the town.

Simon Templar also was silent. There had been
times when
he had deliberately tried to shut out from his mind the
respon
sibility for Monty Hayward’s predicament, and yet it had never
been very
far below the surface of his thoughts. He had ig
nored it, joked with
it, passed it over; but now, with the tight
ening of the net round
them, it was brought home to him as another debt that was still to be paid.

He picked their route with an unerring
instinct: to Monty
Hayward it seemed almost inconceivable that such a journey
could be made in broad daylight without at least one casual observer to see
them pass, but the Saint achieved it. There was
a spring in his
stride and a fighting line to his mouth that told
their own tale. For
him the story could have only one denoue
ment; but the
precious minutes were ticking up against them,
and the time he had to
play with was hacked sharp and square out of the schedule of destiny. Three
hours, perhaps, he might
allow for the local gendarmerie to amuse
themselves with their
squad cars and bloodhounds; but inside that
limit the Higher Command would get its circus licked into shape. The Higher
Command,
with its coat off and the arrears of L
ö
wenbr
ä
u
oozing out of its stagnant pores,
would be fusing telephone
wires in all directions with the coordinating
groundwork of a
cordon that would demand identification papers from a migrating
tapeworm. The Higher Command, with its ineffable moustachios fairly bristling
to avenge the affronts which had been sprayed upon them, would be winnowing
through the
enclosed area in an almighty clean-up that would fan the
pants of
every citizen in that peaceful community. The Higher
Command, in short,
would be taking a personal interest in
the gala; and when
that time came Simon Templar had no de
sire to be around.

It was six o’clock when Treuchtlingen received
them again,
letting them into its back streets through a narrow path
be
tween two houses—less than fourteen hours since that moment by the
bridge in Innsbruck when Monty Hayward of his own
unsuspecting free
will had launched them on that harebrained
steeplechase. The town
seemed quiet enough. Like the core
of a cyclone, it was a paradoxical
oasis of tranquillity within
the belt of official spleen that must have
been raging round
it. The Saint and Monty plunged into it as if the mayor
were their personal friend, and no one paid any attention to them;
but the
Saint had expected that much immunity. Doubtless
the next day’s
newspapers would inform him that his exploits
had roused the
neighbourhood to a fever of indignation, but
if he had hoped to be
regaled with the magnificent spectacle
of Treuchtlingen’s
aldermen woofling up and down the main
street with their
ties under their ears and the veins standing
out on the backs of
their necks he would have been disap
pointed. Treuchtlingen went about its
daily business, and left
any woofling that might be called for to the
authorities who
were paid to woofle on suitable occasions. It was a
sidelight on the social system which deputes its emotions to a handful of
salaried wooflers that had stood the Saint in good stead before;
and yet
perhaps only Simon knew how thin was the veneer
of apathy on which
his bluff was based.

But once they were inside the town concealment was impos
sible, and the only way to proceed was by that
sheer arrogance
of brass-neckedness in which the Saint’s nerve had never
failed
him. They located the police station
without difficulty and
walked past
it. Farther on, a heaven-sent
Weinstube
swam into
their ken; and Monty Hayward realized that his
throat had
beeH parched for hours. He
glared at the temptation like a
starving
rabbi resisting a fat slice of ham, but the Saint saw
no objection.

“Why shouldn’t we?” drawled the
Saint. “We don’t want to roam about the streets. We can’t go into a
Konditorei
—they’d
think there was
something wrong with us. Why not?”

Their trail turned through the doors. It was
Simon who
called for beer and sausages, and produced a packet of
evil-
smelling cigarettes from his overalls. Monty began to wish that
he had
suffered his thirst in silence: he had caught a smile in
the
Saint’s eye which forboded more mischief.

“I have been thinking,” said the
Saint.

He broke off while their order was placed on
the stained
wooden table in front of them. To fill up the interval he
smiled
winningly at the barmaid. She smiled back, disclosing
a faceful of teeth
that jutted out over, her lower lip like a
frozen Niagara of
ivory. The Saint watched her departure with
some emotion; and then
he turned to Monty again and raised
his glass. They were in an isolated
corner of the room where
their conversation could not be overheard.