Again Monty clicked his heels. The Saint knew that he had had three years at Bonn in which to perfect his German; but this performance revealed a new Monty Hayward, in the guise of yet another gifted actor lost to the silver screen.
"I shall be honoured to relieve your Highness of further inconvenience."
And then the Saint pushed himself forward.
"It is nothing but lies!" he protested furiously. "His Highness is attempting to rob me. That box is mine. I can take you to his Highness's castle and show you things that will make you believe me——"
"Silence!" thundered the policeman magnificently. "It will not help you to insult the nobly born." He turned to the prince. "Your Highness shall not be troubled any longer."
The prince produced a couple of notes from his wallet.
"Yon will understand," he said, "that I do not wish for any vulgar publicity."
The policeman bowed.
"It is understood. Your Highness's name need not be mentioned. I am proud to have assisted your Highness." He turned again to the Saint. "Outside, you scum!"
"But, for God's sake, listen!" cried the Saint desperately. "Will you not understand that if you let his Highness go, I shall never see my property again? At least you must take him to the Polizeiamt with me, so that the ownership of the box can be properly settled——"
"The ownership of the box is settled to my satisfaction," said the policeman stoically.
Simon clenched his fists.
"But that is only right!" he said, with savagely direct emphasis. "You cannot take me without the box. I have risked everything to keep it!"
"It will be no use to you in the prison," replied the policeman imperviously. "Will you come outside or must I take you?"
"I refuse—"
Simon stopped short. The policeman's revolver was pointed menacingly at his chest
"Heraus!"
The Saint grabbed the gun and hurled the policeman back. And then the chauffeur's muscular arms wound round his own below the elbows. While they swayed and struggled in the road, he felt two bands of steel snapped on his wrists. Then he was released. He stood wrestling with the handcuffs while the policeman went back to the door of the limousine.
"Your Highness's servant."
The policeman returned. He seized the Saint by the shoulder and pushed him roughly onwards. Fuming and cursing, the Saint suffered himself to be manhandled back to the waiting automobile. He was forced into the front seat. The policeman stepped in beside him and took the wheel. The car, with its engine still running, went into gear and gathered speed.
They had travelled a mile before the Saint spoke.
"The hell of a fine partner in crime you are," he said sourly.
Monty kept his eyes on the road.
"And a hell of a fine crook you are," he said acidly. "If this is your usual form, it beats me why there's ever been any fuss about you at all. It's a wonder they didn't lock you up the day after you stole your first sixpence. That's what I think about you. You prance about and get into the most hopeless messes, and expect me to get you out of 'em——"
Patricia leaned over from the back seat.
"Don't you see, boy? We had to get you away somehow, and Monty did the only thing he could. I think he worked it marvellously."
Simon hammered the handcuffs on his knee in a frenzy.
"Oh, Monty was wonderful!" he exploded bitterly. "Monty was Mother's Angel Child! Make your getaway at any cost— that's Monty. Throw up every stake in the game except your own skin. Damn the boodle that we've all been chancing our necks for——"
"It'll do you good," said Monty. "Next time, you won't be in such a hurry to get your friends into trouble."
"But—damn your daft eyes! We had the game in our hands!"
"What game? What is this boodle that all the shindy's about, anyway? You keep us up all night chasing that wretched little box, and I don't suppose you've any more idea what's inside it than I have. For all you know, it's probably a couple of floating kidneys."
Simon sank back in his corner and closed his eyes.
"I can tell you what they were. I've seen 'em. They're the larger half of the Montenegrin crown jewels. They disappeared on their way to Christie's six weeks back. I was thinking of having a dart at them myself. And we could have had 'em for the asking!"
"They wouldn't be any use to me," said Monty, unmoved. "I've given up wearing a crown." He locked the car round a corner and drove on. "What you ought to be doing is thanking God you're sitting here without a bullet in you."
Simon sighed.
"Oh, well," he said—"If you don't want any boodle, that's O. K. with me."
He twisted his hands round and gazed moodily upwards at the stars.
"You know," he said meditatively, "it's extraordinary what bloomers people make in moments of crisis. Take dear old Rudolf, for example. You'd think he'd have remembered that even when you shut a combination lock that's just been opened, you still have to jigger the wheels round to seal it up. Otherwise the combination is still set at the key word. . . . But he didn't remember, which is perhaps as well."
And Simon Templar took his hands from his coat pocket; and the car swerved giddily across the road as Monty Hayward stared from the scintillating jumble of stones in the Saint's hands to the laughing face of the Saint.
VI. HOW MONTY HAYWARD SLEPT UNEASILY,
AND SIMON TEMPLAR WARBLED ABOUT WORMS
"NEXT on the left is ours," said the Saint mildly. "I don't think we'll take the corner till we get there, if it's all the same to you."
Monty straightened the car up viciously within a thumb's breadth of the ditch, and slackened the pressure of his foot on the accelerator. His eyes turned back to the road and stayed there ominously.
"Let me get this clear," he said. "Are you telling me that you've still got the whole total of the boodle?"
"Monty, I am."
"And the Crown Prince is chasing back to his schloss with an entirely empty box."
"You said it."
"So that apart from the police being after us for assault, battery, murder, and stealing a car, your pal Rudolf will be turning round to come after us and slit our throats——"
"And with any luck," supplemented the Saint cheerfully, "Comrade Krauss will also be raising dust along the warpath. I left him with a pretty easy getaway in front of him; and if he roused up at any time while the complete garrison was occupied with the business of hallooing after me, the odds are that he made it. Which ought to keep the entertainment from freezing up."
This third horn on the dilemma was new to Monty and Patricia. Simon Templar explained. He gave a vigorously graphic account of his movements since he had left them to paddle their own canoes at the Königshof, and threw in a bald description of the mediaeval sports and pastimes at the Crown Prince's castle which sent a momentary squirm of horror creeping over their scalps. It took exactly five lines of collocution to link up Comrade Krauss with the man who had vanished from the fateful Room Twelve above the Saint's own suite; and then the whole tangled structure of the amazing web of circumstance in which they were involved became as vividly apparent to the other two as it was to the Saint himself. And the Saint chuckled.
"Boys and girls, my idea of a quiet holiday is just this!"
"Well, it may be your idea of a quiet holiday, but it isn't mine," said Monty Hayward morosely. "I've got a wife and three kiddies in England, and what are they going to think?"
"Wire 'em to come out and join you," said the Saint dispassionately. "We may be wanting all the help we can get"