"I suppose there isn't anything of this sort that Simon ever travels without," he commented pessimistically. "If you've got a gallows in the cabin trunk, it may save a lot of mucking about when the police catch us."
The gunman was still in no condition to make any effective resistance. Monty endeavoured to adapt a working knowledge of knots acquired in some experience of week-end yachting to the peculiar eccentricities of the human frame, and made a very passable job of it. Having reduced his victim to a state of blasphemous helplessness, he dusted the knees of his trousers and turned again to Pat.
"I seem to remember that the next item is a gag," he said. "Do you know anything about gags?"
"I have seen it done," said the girl unblushingly. "Lend me your handkerchief. . . . And that other one in your breast pocket."
She bent over the squirming prisoner, and a particularly vile profanity subsided into a choking gurgle. Monty watched the performance with admiration.
"You know, I couldn't have done that," he said. "And I've been editing this kind of stuff all my life. The stories never give you the important details. They just say: 'Lionel Strongarm bound and gagged his captive'—and the thing's done. Where did you learn it all?"
Patricia laughed.
"Simon taught me," she said simply. "If there's anything that makes him see red, it's inefficiency. He explains a thing once, and expects you to remember it for the rest of your life. Your brain's got to be on tiptoe from the time you get up in the morning till the time you go to bed at night. He's like that himself, and everyone else has got to be the same. It nearly sent me off my rocker till I got used to it; and then I began to see that I'd been half asleep all my life, like eighty per cent of other people. He was right, of course."
Monty went over and poured himself out a drink.
"This is a new line on the private life of an adventurer," he murmured. "Did he ever explain what one should do when stranded in a hotel with a corpse on the bed and a gun artist under the sofa?"
"That," said the girl composedly, "is supposed to be an elementary exercise in initiative."
Monty grimaced.
"Some initiative is certainly called for," he admitted. "Simon may be away for a week, and then Stanislaus will begin to smell."
He wandered pensively back into the bedroom and wished that he felt suitably depressed. Two hours ago he would have expressed no desire at all to find himself in such a situation. Its potentialities in the way of local colour would have left him uninspired. Four years in France had left him with a profound appreciation of the amenities of peace. On several occasions he had told the Saint that he was always pleased to hear or read of stirring exploits anywhere, but that as far as he personally was concerned he could enjoy enough violence to keep his glands active from an armchair. And if he had to be decoyed into that sort of thing, he most unequivocally wanted it to be gradual. A minor job of shop-lifting, if necessary, or an evening out with a pickpocket, would have satisfied his craving for excitement for a long time.
But since he had been blamelessly landed up to his neck in a kind of thieves' picnic in which the disposal of corpses and gagged gunmen was supposed to be merely an elementary exercise in initiative, he found himself taking an interest in the affair which he tried to persuade himself was purely morbid. He frisked Weissmann's clothes with an almost professional callousness and brought a selection of papers back with him to the sitting room.
"While you're getting your initiative tuned up," he said, "it might be helpful if we knew something more about Stanislaus."
Patricia came and looked over his shoulder as he ran through the meagre supply of documents. There were a couple of letters on heavily scented pink notepaper, addressed to Heinrich Weissmann at the Dome, Boulevard Montparnasse, Paris, which disclosed nothing of interest to anyone wishing to have the strength of ten; a letter of credit for two thousand marks, issued by the Dresdner Bank in Köln; the counterfoil of a sleeping-car ticket from Zurich to Milan; and a receipted bill from a hotel in Basle.
"He certainly did his best to shake off the hue and cry," said Monty; "but does it tell us anything else?"
"What about that?" asked Patricia, turning over one of the pink envelopes.
On the flap was a pencilled line of writing:
Zr 12 H Königshof
"Room Twelve, Hotel Königshof," Monty translated promptly. "Looks as if this was the very place he was making for."
The girl bit her lip.
"It'd be a frightful coincidence——"
"I don't know. Those squiggly marks in the corner—they're just the sort of pattern a fellow draws at the telephone. Stanislaus would naturally have some note of the place where he was supposed to deliver the boodle. And there's no reason why it shouldn't be here. This is the most slap-up hotel for miles around—the very place that a super crook would make his headquarters——" Monty slewed round in his chair and regarded her expectantly. "Suppose the Big Noise was sitting right over our heads?"
Patricia jumped up.
"But that's just what he is doing, if that address is right!
Room Twelve is on the first floor. When we came here they offered us Eleven, but Simon wouldn't have it. He tried to get Twelve, which has a fire escape outside, but it was taken yesterday——"
"I don't see that it's anything to get excited about, anyway," said Monty soothingly. "If it's true, it only means that another bunch of toughs may be crashing in here at any moment to commit a few more murders."
"I'm going to run up the fire escape and see if I can see anything."
Monty looked at her in frank amazement.
For the first instant he thought she was bluffing. He had instinctively salted down her laconic description of the Saint's inexorable training. And then he saw the recklessness of the smile that parted her fresh lips, the eager vitality of her slim body, the devil-may-care light in her blue eyes; and the bantering challenge that trembled on the tip of his tongue went unuttered. There was a living embodiment of Saintliness in her that startled. He smiled.
"If you don't mind my saying so," he remarked soberly, "Simon's a damned lucky man. And you won't run up the fire escape, because I'm going to."
He went out onto the lawn, located the stairway on his left, and groped his way up the narrow iron steps. There was only one window on the first floor which could possibly answer the vague description he had been given, and no light showed through it. He paused on the grating beside it and wondered what on earth he should do next. To scale an awkward species of ladder at that hour of the morning in order to inspect a room, and then to return with the information that it possesses a window constructed of square panes of glass, struck him as being an extraordinarily inane procedure. And he could see nothing inside from where he was. There seemed to be only one alternative, and that was to insert himself surreptitiously into the room.
Fortunately one of the casements was ajar, and he opened it wide and clambered over the sill with a silent prayer that he might be able to pretend successfully that he was drunk.
Every movement he made appeared to shake the hotel to its foundations. The loose change clinked in his pockets like a dozen sledge hammers knocking the hell out of a cracked anvil, his clothes rustled like a forest in a gale, and the sound of his breathing seemed loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The jaws of the prison yawned on every side. He could hear them.
Then his right shin collided with something hard. He felt around for the offending object, and presently discovered it to be a chair lying on its side. Peering puzzledly into the gloom, he made out the white outline of the bed. He strained his eyes at it for some seconds; and then, with a sudden inspiration, he walked straight across the room and switched on the light. ...
Three minutes later he was back in the suite below.