"I don't profess to understand anything that's happening tonight," he said, "but the bird upstairs has flown. Flown in a hurry, too, because he's gone without his coat and tie."
Patricia stared.
"But—surely he must have gone to the bathroom."
"Not unless he intends to spend the night there. His door was shut, and the key was on the table by the bed. That's what they call deduction."
The girl sat down on the arm of the Chesterfield with a frown of perplexity wrinkling her forehead. The development required some thinking over.
One thing was as plain as a pikestaff, and she phrased it undemonstratively:
"If we sit around here doing nothing, we're just asking to be shot at."
"Look here, Pat," said Monty Hayward, buttressing himself against the mantelpiece, "we're between several fires. Don't forget that the police have got it in for us as well. And one of the chief essentials in a mess like this seems to be to have the door open for a clean getaway. Now, what would be the Saint's idea about that?"
"He'd say that the main thing was to leave no evidence."
"Right. Then the only serious piece of evidence is that stiff in the next room. Whatever happens, we can't leave him lying about. And since we know where he was going, and the coast is clear, I should think the best thing we could do is to help him finish his journey."
Patricia looked at him thoughtfully.
"You mean, plant him in the room upstairs——"
"Exactly. And let the gang he belongs to take care of him. It's about time they had some worries of their own."
"And what about Ethelbert?"—she indicated the prisoner with a movement of her cigarette.
"Put a knife beside him and let him do the best he can.
Even if they catch him, I don't think he'll have anything to say. For one thing, Stanislaus seems to have been no friend of his; and besides, if he wanted to clear up the mystery, he'd have to give an account of what he was doing in here, which wouldn't be too easy for him."
The argument seemed flawless. Patricia herself could offer no improvements on the scheme; and she realized that every wasted minute increased the danger.
She led the way into the bedroom and produced an electric flashlamp to light Monty on his gruesome task. Luckily the external bleeding had been comparatively slight, and no blood had penetrated to the bedclothes. Monty picked up the rigid body in his arms and went out without another word, and she stayed behind to straighten the sheets and coverlet.
The feelings of Monty Hayward as he climbed the fire escape for the second time were somewhat disordered. He insisted to himself, on purely logical grounds, that he was scared stiff; but the emotion somehow failed to connect amicably with another stratum of his immortal soul which was having the time of its life. He began to ask himself whether perhaps he had been missing something by steadfastly burying himself in a respectable existence; and immediately he reflected that the prospect of being hanged by the neck for other people's murders was a damned good thing to miss anyway. He solemnly vowed that the next time he saw a harmless-looking little man being set on by a gang of thugs, he would raise his hat politely and pass by on the other side; and simultaneously he felt rather pleased with himself for the efficiency with which he had laid out his opponent. It was all very difficult; and he pushed himself and his grisly luggage through the first-floor window with some doubts of whether he was really the same man who had been placidly quaffing Pilsener at the Breinössl two hours ago.
After a moment's deliberation, he laid the little man artistically down beside the overturned chair, rubbed the chair with his sleeve to remove any fingerprints, and stood back to examine his handiwork. It looked convincing enough. . . . And it was then that the Recording Angel shuddered on his throne and upset the inkpot; for Monty Hayward gazed at his handiwork and grinned. ...
Then he switched out the light. He hopped over the window sill and trotted down the escape with a briskness that was almost rollicking. The glorious company of the Apostles held their breath.
He was three steps from the bottom when he saw a shadow move in the darkness just below, and a hoarse voice challenged him:
"Wer da?"
Monty's stomach took a short stroll round his interior.
Then he stepped down to the ground.
"Hullo, ole pineapple," he hiccoughed. "Ishnit lovely night? Are you the lighthoushkeeper? Becaush if you are——"
A light was flashed in his face, and he heard a startled exclamation:
"Gott im Himmel! Der Engländer, der mich in den Fluss geworfen hat——"
Monty understood, and gasped.
And then, even as it had happened earlier to Simon Templar, the tattered remnants of his virtue were swept into annihilation like chaff before a fire. If he were destined for the scaffold, so let it be. His boats had been burned for him.
He flung up his arm and knocked the light aside. As it flew into the air, he had a fleeting glimpse of the battered face of the man he had tackled on the bridge, with his one undamaged eye bulging and his bruised mouth opening for a shout. He crowded every ounce of his strength into a left hook to the protruding chin, and heard the man drop like a poleaxed ox.
Monty picked him up and carried him into the sitting room. Monty was smiling. He considered that that left hook was a beauty.
"We were only just in time," he said. "This hotel is getting unhealthy."
The girl looked at him open-mouthed.
"Where was he?"
"Standing at the bottom of the fire escape, waiting for me. He's one of the blokes we threw into the river. I think I can guess what happened. If the police were waiting to pinch Stanislaus, they may have been nearly as hot on the trail of the man upstairs. They came dashing along here as soon as they'd reported to headquarters and borrowed a change of clothes —you can see this chap's uniform is too tight for him. The other two are probably interviewing the management and preparing to break in the door. This one was posted in the garden to see that their man didn't make a getaway through the window."
Patricia took a cigarette from her case and lighted it with a steady hand.
"If that bloke's uniform is too tight for him," she remarked evenly, "it should just about fit you."
Monty raised one eyebrow.
After a moment's silence he bent a calculating eye on the unconscious policeman. When he looked up again there was a twinkle in his gaze.
"Is that what the Saint would do?" he asked quizzically.
She nodded.
"I can't see any other way out."
"Then I expect I could manage it."
He knelt down and began to strip off the policeman's uniform and accoutrements. The trousers went on over his own, with his coattails inside—he foresaw possible difficulties in the way of parting permanently with his own garments—and then Patricia was ready for him with the tunic. Tailored for the more generous figure of a Teutonic gendarme, it fitted him perfectly over his own clothes. Monty was transformed.
He was buckling on the cumbersome sword belt when the telephone began to ring.
"If that's the Saint," he said, "tell him I never want to speak to him again."
Patricia threw herself at the instrument.
"Hullo. . . . Simon—where have you been? . . . Oh, don't play the fool, boy. We must know quickly. . . . Well, the police are here. . . . The police—the men you and Monty threw in the river. Keep quiet and let me tell you."
V. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR CHASED HIMSELF,
AND MONTY HAYWARD DID HIS STUFF
SIMON TEMPLAR deposited himself neatly on the roof of the car as it flashed underneath him and settled himself down to wallow in the side-splitting aspects of the ride. The humour of the situation struck him as being definitely rich. To have first induced a wily old veteran like Prince Rudolph to transport you personally to his secret lair, and then, after you have butted violently into an up-and-coming conversazione, plugged his gentleman's gentleman in the lower abdomen, pulled His Elegant Elevation's leg, shot a hole in the air an inch from his elevated ear, snaffled a large can of boodle, and made yourself generally unpopular in divers similar ways, to be taking precisely the same route back to the long grass was an achievement of which any man might have been justly proud. And yet that was exactly what the Saint was doing.