"Did you get that, souls?" he said.
"She wants to see you," said Patricia. "Am I supposed to get excited?"
"She wants more than that," he said. "She wants a cloakroom ticket which she gave me to keep for her — which she never gave me. She wants it at once; and nobody's to know where I've gone. And somebody was listening on the wire all the time to make sure she said all the right things. So I don't see how I can refuse the date." The Saint's smile was dazzlingly seraphic. "I told you something was bound to happen, and it's starting now!"
4
"Excuse me a minute while I get into my shooting clothes," he said.
He vanished out of the nearest door; but the room had hardly had time to adapt itself to his disappearance when he was back again. The Saint could always make a professional quick-change artist look like an elderly dowager dressing for a state ball, and when he was in a hurry he could do things with clothes that bordered on the miraculous. He came back in a gray lounge suit whose sober hue had no counterpart in the way he wore it, which was with all the peculiarly rakish elegance that was subtly infused into anything he put on. His fresh shift was buttoned and his tie was tied, and he was feeding a fully charged magazine into the butt of a shining Luger.
"You're not really going, are you?" asked Patricia hopelessly.
She knew when she said it that it was a waste of words, and the scapegrace slant of his brows was sufficient answer.
"Of course not, darling," he said. "These are my new pajamas."
"But you're doing just what they want you to do!"
"Maybe. But do they know that I know it? I don't think so. That phone call was as straightforward as a baby's prayer — to the guy who was checking up on it. Only Valerie knows that she never gave me a cloakroom ticket, and she knows I know it. She's on the spot in her own flat, and that was the only way she could tip me off and call for help. Do you want me to stay home and knit?"
Patricia stood up. She kissed him.
"Be careful, boy," she said. "You know I look terrible in black."
Peter Quentin finished his drink and rose. He buttoned his coat with a deep sigh.
"I suppose this is the end of our chance of a night's rest," he said pessimistically. "I ought to have stayed in Anford." He saluted Patricia. "Will you excuse Hoppy and me if we trot along to take care of the dragons while your problem child is striking attitudes in front of the heroine? We don't want anything to happen to him — it would make life so horribly quiet and peaceful."
Simon stopped at the door.
"Just a minute," he said. "There may be policemen and other emissaries of the ungodly prowling around outside. We'd better not take chances. Will you call down to Sam Outrell, Pat, and tell him to meet me in the garage?"
As they rode down in the elevator he felt the springy elation of the moment spreading its intoxication through his muscles. The lucid swiftness of his mind ran on, constructing a clear objective framework of action in which he moved with unhurried precision with each step unerringly laid out a fraction of time before he reached it.
Down in the basement garage Sam Outrell, the janitor, was waiting for him when the elevator doors opened, with a look of placid expectancy on his pleasant bucolic face. He fell in at the Saint's side as Simon walked across to where the Hirondel stood waiting in its private bay.
"Goin' out on business again, sir?" he queried, with the imperturbation of many years of experience of the Saint's unlawful occasions.
"I hope so, Sam." The Saint cocked his legs over the side while Peter and Hoppy climbed into their own seats. "I don't want to stage a big demonstration, but you might just do a quiet job of obstructing if anyone's waiting for us. Take your own heap and follow me up the ramp, and see that you stick tight on my tail. When I wave my hand, swing across the road and stall your engine. I'll only want two or three minutes."
The exhaust purred as he touched the starter. He pulled the Hirondel out to the foot of the ramp and held it there, warming the engine, until he saw Outrell's car behind him. Then he let in the clutch and roared up the slope, with the other car following as if it were nailed to his rear fenders.
At the top he whipped round in a screaming turn out into the narrow street that ran by the back of Cornwall House. There was a taxi parked close by the garage entrance and a small sports car with a man reading a newspaper in it standing just behind; both of them might have been innocent, but if they were it would do them no harm to be obstructed for a few minutes.
The Saint raised one hand just above his head and made a slight movement.
He heard the squeal of Sam Outrell's brakes behind him, and grinned gently to himself as he locked the wheel for another split-arch turn into Half Moon Street. The snarl of the engine rose briefly, lulled, and then settled into a steady drone as they nosed into Piccadilly, shot across the front of a belated bus and went humming down the west-ward slope towards Hyde Park Corner.
Peter Quentin settled deep into his seat and turned to Hoppy.
"I hope your insurance policies are all paid up, Hoppy," he said.
"I ain't never had none," said Mr Uniatz seriously. "I seen guys what try to sell me insurance, but I t'ought dey was all chisellers." He brooded anxiously over the idea. "Do ya t'ink I oughta get me some, boss?"
"I'm afraid it's too late now," said Peter encouragingly. "But perhaps it doesn't matter. You haven't got a lot of wives and things lying around, have you?"
Mr Uniatz scratched his head with a row of worried fingers.
"I dunno, boss," he said shyly. "Every time I get married I am not t'inking about it very much. So I never know if I have got married or not," he said, summarizing his problem with a conciseness that could scarcely have been improved upon.
Peter pondered over the exposition until he felt himself getting slightly giddy, when he decided that it would probably be safer to leave it alone. And the Saint spun the wheel again and sent the Hirondel thundering down Grosvenor Place.
"When you two trollops have finished gloating over your sex life," he said, "you'd better try to remember what happens when we get to Marsham Street."
"But we know," said Peter, carefully continuing to refrain from looking at the road. "Don't we, Hoppy? If we ever get there alive, which is very unlikely, we jump about in the foreground and try to attract the bullets while the beauteous heroine swoons into Simon's arms."
Simon squeezed the car through on the wrong side of a crawling taxi which was hogging the centre of the road, and while he was doing it he neatly swiped Peter's cigarette with his disengaged hand.
"That's something like the idea; except that as usual you'll be in the background. I'm just building on probabilities, but I think I've got it pretty straight. Two or more thugs will be in possession. When I ring the bell, one of them will come to the door. They can't all open it at once, and at least one of them will probably be busy keeping Valerie quiet, and in any case they won't want any noise that they can avoid. Besides, they'll be expecting me to walk in like a blindfolded lamb. Now, I think it can only break two ways. Either the warrior who opens the door will open it straight on to a gun…"
He went on, sketching possibilities in crisp, comprehensive lines, dictating move and counter-move in quick sinewy sentences that strung the strides of a supreme tactician together into a connected chain on which even Hoppy Uniatz could not lose his grip. It might all seem very simple in the end, but in that panoramic grasp of detail lay the genius that made amazing audacities seem simple.
"Okay, skipper," Peter said soberly, as the car swooped into Marsham Street. "But don't forget you're responsible to Hoppy's widows and my orphans."