The Saint's Getaway Page 18

  He gave further instructions.

  And thereupon a number of remarkable experiences began to enliven the daily round of Herr Bruno Pelz, chauffeur extraordinary to His Indescribable Pulchritude the Crown Prince Rudolf.

  They initiated themselves harmlessly enough with the decep­tively commonplace incident of an overalled workman lever­ing himself out of the hole in the road where he had been en­gaged in his own abstruse travail, and walking across to­wards him. They continued in the same deceptively common­place manner with the workman approaching Herr Pelz and politely requesting the loan of a match for his cigarette. And they went on with Herr Pelz providing the required light; which was also a very commonplace event in itself, for Herr Pelz was not yet submerged in such abysses of indiscriminate churlishness as to revolt against the custom of a country where fire is as free as air. But at that point in Herr Pelz's history the ordinariness of the affair ended for ever.

  He struck a match and held it to the workman's cigarette, glancing at him casually as he did so. And that casual glance gave him the shock of his life.

  Over the uncertain flame the workman was ogling him with the most horrifying squint that he had ever seen. The round, goggling eyes swivelled over him with a repulsive significance that was as nauseating as the leer of a bloated harpy in a lecher's delirium. Herr Pelz recoiled from it in an involuntary convulsion of disgust. He felt the hairs rising on the nape of his neck, as if those odiously astigmatic eyes had stretched out of their orbits and laid their slimy contact on his flesh. But the workman seemed utterly unconscious of the repugnance which he aroused. He muttered his thanks, and turned away with a final hideous wink that warped his whole face into one ghastly deformity of innuendo.

  Herr Pelz's head revolved in a perfect mesmerism of loath-ing to watch him hobbling down the street. He couldn't even tear his gaze away from the man's back while his memory was still crawling with the impressions of that repellent stare. And thus it came about that Herr Pelz saw what he might not otherwise have noticed: that as the workman passed under the next street lamp he pulled a filthy handker­chief out of his pocket, and a scrap of paper was dragged out with it and fluttered down to the pavement.

  Herr Pelz could no more have resisted that scrap of paper than he could have vowed himself into a monastery. He started towards it without a second thought, impelled solely by the degenerate curiosity which the experience had aroused. Then as he came nearer, he saw that the scrap of paper was a hun­dred-mark note.

  He picked it up, and turned it over suspiciously in the lamp­light. It was unquestionably genuine.

  Curiosity gave way to an even more deeply rooted cupidity. Herr Pelz flashed a furtive glance around him to see if anyone else had observed the accident. But no one seemed to be pay­ing any attention to him, and the other workman was ham­mering away at his pipes with uninterrupted vigour. Herr Pelz returned his gaze with a little less revulsion to the bene­ficent ogre's retreating figure. And as Herr Pelz looked, the ogre replaced the handkerchief in his pocket—and a second hundred-mark note drifted down on to the pavement. If there was any manifestation of Providence at which Herr Bruno Pelz had ever prayed to be a witness, it was the phe­nomenon of an endless flood of hundred-mark notes pouring down at his feet; and at that moment he seemed to be spectat­ing the nearest approach to such a prodigy that he was ever likely to see. While he stared up the street with bulging eyes, a third scrap of paper fell from the workman's pocket and floated down into the gutter—closely followed by a fourth. A fifth, a sixth, and a seventh joined them with incredible rapid­ity. The workman was shedding money all over the road like a perambulating mint. And then he turned off into a dark side alley with the eighth hundred marks flopping down to the pav­ing stones behind him.

  Herr Pelz didn't even hesitate. He plunged on to his doom with his mouth hanging open, as fast as his legs would carry him. Prince Rudolf was still inside the police station, and even if he came out unexpectedly, an excuse should be easy to find. And meanwhile Fortune was opening her cornucopia and de­canting largesse with a liberality which it would have been a sin to ignore. Whether the workman was a thief, an escaped lunatic, or an eccentric millionaire—if he could be caught in that dark alley . . . Herr Pelz's black eyes gleamed like mar­bles. There had been days when he had ruled a minor under­world as master of the precarious trade of the garotte, and his hand had not lost its cunning. It would be over and finished in ten seconds, without a sound.

  He hurried down the pavement, snatching up hundred-mark notes as he went. His fingers grasped the last one as he turned into the alley, and a few yards down the lane he saw another. He stooped to pick it up. . . .

  And then a massive lump of metal wielded with masterly precision crashed into the back of his head. For one blissful second he gaped at a complete free fireworks display that would have been the making of any Fourth of July; and then a hospitable darkness came down and folded him in his dreams.

  Monty Hayward returned like a paladin from the wars.

  He lowered himself to the cobbles beside the hole in the road, and looked at the Saint with eyes that were no longer squinting. There was the seed of a smile in them—a seed such as can only be sown by the force of a doughty blow struck for the honour of lawlessness. And the Saint smiled back.

  "Oke?" he drawled.

  "Oke," said Monty Hayward. "I hid in a doorway and dotted him a peach. There was a sort of van close by, and a bloke was just starting it up. I heard him say they'd have to hustle to get to Nürnberg by dinner time, so I picked up your pal and heaved him in with the greens." He looked round as an an­tique Ford swung into the street and clattered past. "And there he goes!"

  Simon Templar nodded, and the nod spoke volumes.

  He stood up and stretched his legs.

  "Then he won't bother us for some time," he said. "I guess we can begin."

  "Suits me, Saint."

  The Saint gazed down at him steadily. In fewer years than the other man had lived, he had come to know the game from every angle, and grown used to its insidious allurements. Its seductive charms held him no less than they had always done; but he knew their treachery. Even then, he hesitated to take advantage of Monty's surrender.

  "There's no need for you to come inside," he said. "This isn't quite like anything we've done before. We may be running into a trap. If you'd like to hang on here for a bit——"

  "Why not get on with it?" said Monty Hayward shortly. "I wouldn't miss a show like this for a thousand pounds."

  The Saint smiled ruefully.

  "On your own head be it," he said; but his hand rested on Monty's shoulder for a moment.

  And then he turned and walked across the road.

  He had no illusions about what he was trying to do. Before it was finished there might easily be a miniature war storming in that peaceful street. He had to take the risk. And if neces­sary, he'd have to fight the war. It was the only way. Patricia Holm was inside that police station, irreparably meshed in the ponderous dragnet of the Law; and even if he had been a free man, that would have seemed hopeless enough—to sit scheming with lawyers, pulling the sticky threads of bail and remand, pitting miserable atoms of truth against the massed batteries of intrigue and influence that Rudolf could command, know­ing that the scales were weighted against him from the begin­ning. With the police offering rewards for his own capture it couldn't be thought of. He was taking the one chance that the fall of the cards gave him—a clean fighting chance to win the game as he had fought it from the start, as he had won such games before, with the honest steel of a gun butt in his hands, clearing the tangled chess board with a challenge of death.

  He ran up the station steps and entered the bare vestibule. On his left was a corridor; farther down he came to a pair of glass doors opening into a microscopic space where the com­mon citizen could stand and lean over a counter to hold con­verse with the Law. Beyond the counter was an untidy sort of office, in which he could see one bald-headed policeman writ­in
g laboriously at a desk and another thoughtfully picking his teeth.

  Simon burst in unceremoniously, with one quick glance backwards to make sure that Monty was following. The game had to be played fast—taken at a rush that would allow the enemy no time to ponder over details or gaze too closely at his own charming features. He fell breathlessly on the counter with his face a mask of agitation under the grime.

  "Machen Sie schnell!" he panted. "Ein Kind ist von einem Motorrad angefahren worden!"

  The toothpicking officer might not have been sentimentally moved by the thought of a child being knocked down by a motor-bicycle, but he had a commendable devotion to duty.

  He picked up his cap and came through a flap in the coun­ter, buttoning the neck of his tunic. Simon stood aside to let him pass. As the policeman stepped out of sight of his colleague in the office, Simon hit him twice on the back of the neck—two slaughterous ju-jitsu blows delivered with the edge of his hand. The policeman slumped forward soundlessly— straight into Monty's arms.

  "Hold him up and talk to him!" rapped the Saint. "You can be seen from outside. I'll just get the other one. . . ."

  Monty propped the policeman against the wall and clung to him dazedly. He had never been called upon to do anything like that, even in his wildest dreams of buccaneering. But the daylight lamps in the vestibule were beating down on him like a battery of limes, and he knew that to anyone glancing in from outside he was as conspicuous as the central figure on a lighted stage. In a kind of stage fright he began to recite "The Wreck of the Hesperus," with violent gesticulations. . . .

  Simon raced back into the office, and the clerkly constable looked up. The Saint gave him no more time to think than he had given the first man.

  "Wollen Sie hinauskommen, bitte? Der andere Schupo be darf Hilfe——"

  The scribe rose from his chair grumbling. Simon caught him with the same blow as he came through the counter, and left him where he fell.

  He went back and found Monty returning hoarsely to the first stanza, having lost his memory after three verses.

  "And the skipper had taken his little daughter to bear

  "All clear," said the Saint.

  He closed in on the other side of Monty's vis-à-vis. Together they bore the unconscious man into the office and laid him on the floor, dragging the clerkly one farther in to join him. Simon rummaged round and discovered handcuffs with which they fastened the two policemen's wrists and ankles; then he improvised gags with their handkerchiefs and screwed-up balls of blotting paper. It was all done with amazing speed and in perfect silence.

  The Saint jerked his head towards a door on the far side of the office, through which came the murmur of voices.

  "I think that must be the charge room," he whispered, in Monty's ear. "Don't make a sound—we aren't ready for the alarm yet——"

  A subdued clicking noise blurred into his speech, and he looked round swiftly. It came from a private telephone ex­change in one corner, where a tiny red bulb was blinking its impatient summons.

  The Saint dropped into the operator's stool and plugged in on the calling circuit. Monty listened tensely, trying to make out the brief words which were clacking through the receiver diaphragm. Only a couple of sentences were spoken; and then he saw the Saint smile and clip out a single word of reply.

  "Sofort!"

  Simon came out of the stool and searched round for the main lead-in wire. He found it and broke it loose with one jerk. Then he spoke a second time in Monty's ear.

  "The Big Cheese is somewhere upstairs. That was him—ask­ing for Pat and the witnesses to be taken up to his office. Keep things quiet while I look after him—there are guns on those stiffs which you can take, and there's sure to be another way out of the charge room which you'll have to watch for. Don't shoot if you can possibly help it. I'll be right back."

  He vanished into the vestibule and turned into the corridor which he had already observed. A short way down it there was a door on the right, through which he heard the same voices talking—the second entrance to the charge room which he had already guessed of. Simon would have given much to listen there for a while, but the ticking seconds were vital. The dusk was now well advanced, and at any moment the squad cars which had depleted the station staff to a negligible fraction would be snoring up the street again with the reports of their fruitiest chase. And when that happened the slugs would be fairly spawning in the salad. . . . The Saint closed his lips grimly and tiptoed past the door without a backward glance.

  He came through to a flight of stone stairs and went up them. On the landing above there were doors all around him. He sank on one knee and scanned the floor for a sign of the room from which the telephone call had come. Only one door showed a tell-tale streak of light dose to the ground. His luck was holding magnificently. He walked up to the door and knocked, instantly receiving the curt command to enter.

  A white-haired man with a square jaw and military shoul­ders, and a middle-aged man with a typical bullet head, both in plain clothes, looked up from a desk littered with maps and papers as the Saint came in.

  Simon let them see his gun and his smile, and reverted to his very best German.

  "I believe you were looking for me," he said.

  2

  The two men coagulated where they stood, staring at him whitely in the dumb startlement of his arrival. If the door had opened to admit a herd of emerald-green hippopotami they could scarcely have been more flabbergasted. But beyond the involuntary swelling of their eyes and the limp fall of their chins they made no movement. Whatever they may have lacked as shining lights of the Law, they were not deficient in human courage.

  Several seconds went by before the elder of the two spoke.

  "What do you want?" he asked calmly.

  "A little talk," said the Saint. He gestured with his auto­matic towards the chief's right hand, which was sliding stealth­ily across the desk towards a row of bell pushes. "You can save yourself the trouble of ringing—all the wires are disconnected, and in any case no one would answer."

  Perhaps he was guilty of stretching the truth, but the chief did not know it. And the warning was spoken with such an air of quiet conviction that it went home as effectively as a shot from the Saint's steady gun. The chief's hand relaxed.

  "How did you get in?"

  "I walked in. The door was open."

  The two men remained motionless, continuing to stare. It was the Saint's gun and the Saintly smile that had paralyzed them at first—their first thought had been that they were dealing with a maniac, and the Saint knew that after the initial shock of his appearance had worn off they were both weighing the chances of his touching off the trigger if either of them made an incautious movement. Against that they were balanc­ing the alternative potentialities of a tactful submission until they could distract the attention of those unwavering blue eyes.

  Then Simon observed that the younger man was studying his face intently; he sensed the incredulous understanding before it was fully formed in the man's own mind and forestalled it cheerfully:

  "I am Simon Templar—the Saint."

  The two men remained motionless—and now the reason for their stillness was concentrated entirely in his gun hand. He could feel every phase of the struggle that went on in their minds. The most wanted man in Europe—the man for whom the whole German police force was scouring the country—the man on whose head extravagant rewards had been placed— was standing coolly before them in that room. The prize that every man in the force would have given his right hand to win was tempting them from a range of four yards. And the auto­matic in his hand was held in the tremorless grip of a steel ro­bot The terse information they had received had magnified itself in their imaginations to something almost fabulous. Whichever of them made the first threatening move would be doomed—the other might possibly survive to win the glory. The atmosphere stifled with the terrific pressure of their inward battle.

  "I shall have to handcuff you," said the Saint qu
ietly. "You will turn your backs and put your hands behind you—and keep them well away from your bodies." He saw their limbs go tense as the full meaning of his order became plain to them, and went on swiftly, with his voice tightened up in a crisp urgency of menace: "You think that any risk would be preferable to the disgrace of having been made prisoners in your own strong­hold. You would be wrong. Both of you would die before you could take a step towards me. You have heard of me—you can estimate your own prospects. I give you my word that no harm will come to you."

  It was a war of wills, fought out silently in that confined space over the thrusting swords of their eyes. The Saint had no wish to shoot. And yet, if it had been forced upon him, he would have dropped those two men as mercifully as he could. To him there was a bigger issue at stake even than the lives of two innocent martyrs to duty.

  Perhaps the two men, by some strange telepathy carried on that clash of opposing wills, felt what was on the Saint's mind. But the elder man bowed his head and turned slowly round. His subordinate paused a moment before following his ex­ample, and turned round at last with an unswerving glare of defiance.

  Simon sensed all the galling bitterness of their surrender as he fastened handcuffs on their wrists and linked their ankles similarly together; but he breathed again. He pocketed his gun and allowed them to turn round to their former positions. In another corner of the room he saw an enormous steel cabi­net, with plenty of room for two men to stand between the shelves of documents that lined the walls. He went over and examined it more closely; but, as he had feared, the great door would seal it hermetically.

  He faced his prisoners again.

  "I do not want to make your position more painful than my own safety demands," he said. "If you will give me your pa­roles as gentlemen that you will make no attempt to escape, or to attract attention in any way, whatever happens, I shall be able to spare you further indignity."

  The chief gazed at him sombrely.

  "You could scarcely do more than you have done already," he remarked, with a trace of irony; "and it seems that you have taken effective measures to protect yourself. What else do you want?"