"Hail, Columbia," said the Saint
Monty Hayward recovered magnificently from his surprise.
"Go away," he said. "I thought we'd got rid of you. We were just getting along splendidly."
The Saint stared at him rudely.
"Hullo," he said. "What's happened to your little soup strainer? I always told you something would happen if you didn't keep moth balls in it."
"It was removed by special request," said Monty, with some dignity. "Pat told me it tickled."
"But what have you been doing?" asked the girl breathlessly.
The Saint laughed and kissed her. He chucked his straw hat up on the rack, loosened his tie, put the monocle away in his pocket, removed the flower from his coat and presented it exquisitely to Monty, and flung himself loosely into a corner seat, long-limbed and piratical and unchangeably disturbing —taking Patricia's cigarette from her lips and inhaling from it between merry lips.
"I've been keeping the ball rolling and adding another felony to our charge sheet Rudolf knows that the boodle is now in the post—he'd done a few calories of hot thinking and spooned the confirmation out of the head porter. I didn't dispute it. Then he offered to join forces and halve the kitty—told me we hadn't a hailstone's break in hell of making the grade alone. Well, the time was getting on, and I'd got to shake him off somehow. He told me his car was outside and it was mine if I cared to go in cahoots with him, so I told him quite truthfully I should love to borrow it. I think he must have misunderstood me, somehow, because we went out together, and he was quite shocked when I simply stepped in and drove away. I ran around a couple of blocks into a quiet street behind the station, and bailed out when no one was looking. Then I went through a shop and bought that lid, and an old woman sold me the veg for two marks because she said I'd a lucky face. And---do you know, Monty?—I believe I have!"
Monty nodded.
"You'll need it," he said decisively. "If Rudolf catches you again I should think he'll roast you over a slow fire."
"He's likely to try it," said the Saint lightly. "But d'you know what it was worth? . . . My villains, think of the situation I Right now we've got Rudolf—got him as he's never been got in his life before. He knows the boodle hasn't gone out of Germany—I couldn't have risked it, because it might have been opened by the Customs. His one hope is to trail me and watch me collect my mail. And the worst thing that could possibly happen to him would be to get us into more trouble with the police! Whatever we said to his proposition, he was doomed to move heaven and earth to keep the paws of the police from our coat collars, because once we were in jug the boodle'd be lost forever. He's got to take everything we give him. We can shoot up his staff—pinch his cars—pour plates of soup down his dicky—and he's got to open his face from ear to ear and tell the world how he loves a good joke!" Simon rolled over on one elbow and thumped Monty in the stomach. "Boys and girls—do you like it?"
The other two sorted his meaning gradually out of that jubilant cataract of words.They analyzed and absorbed it while he laughed at them; and then, before they could marshal their thoughts for a reply, he was raiding and scattering them again with a fresh twist of mountebank's magic.
"You two were followed to the station. Rudolf's pals were snooping round the hotel, even if they thought it was safer to stop outside. You can take it that a guy who could deduce the whole idea of shooting boodle into the post office would have his own notions about fire escapes. That little runt we laid out in the Königshof last night is on the train, and I'll bet he trod in on your heels. The one thing I'm wondering is whether he had time to get a message back before we pulled out" Simon was radiant. "And now try some more. Have you heard the new scream about the bishop?"
"Bishop?" repeated Monty feebly.
"Yep. And for once there's no actress in it——"
He broke off as a large-bosomed female burdened with two travelling rugs, a Pekinese, and the words of Ethel M. Dell threaded herself through the door and deposited herself in the vacant corner. The Saint glared at Monty and waved his arms wildly in the air. He raved on as if he had not noticed the intrusion.
". . . and you would be locked up if I had my way. You ought to have gone to the hospital. I should think if the authorities knew you were tearing around like this with a dose of scarlet fever they'd clap you straight into an asylum. And what about me? Did I tell you I wanted to catch all your diseases——"
A muffled yelp wheezed out of the strong, silent corner, and the Saint started round in time to see a black bombazine rump undulating agitatedly out of view. Simon settled himself back and grinned again.
"Bishop?" Monty encored hazily. The pace was a bit rapid for him.
"Or something like it. But you must have seen him. Bloke with a face like a prawn and white fur round his ears. Damn it, he was rubbering in here a few minutes back! I was dodging him in and out of lavatories all down the train, which is why I didn't join you before—him and Rudolf's five feet of stickphast. Well, I can tell you where I last saw Prawn-face. He was lashed to a chair in the Crown Prince's schloss with that hellish screw tightening into his skull—being invited to open his strong-box and disclose the sparklers. That parson is Comrade Krauss, the bird who first lifted that packet of jewels and began the stampede!"
Patricia recaptured the remains of her cigarette.
"One minute, boy. . . . No—he couldn't have recognized Monty and me. He's never been near us in his life. And you dodged him. . . . But how did he get here?"
"Made his getaway in the confusion, as I expected he would. And if any man's got a right to be thirsting for Rudolf's blood, he has. Why he should be on this particular schnellzug is still
more than we know—unless maybe he overshot the mark thinking we'd got farther ahead than we have. We shall know soon enough. If this journey is peaceful I shall have lived in vain."
The prospect appeared to please him. Nothing was more certain than that he was in the one element for which he had been born: the delight of it danced in those rakehell blue eyes——the eyes of a king in his own kingdom.
"What do we do?" asked Patricia.
She asked it from her own corner, with her hands tucked in the broad leather belt of her tweed costume. It was a swashbuckler's belt with a great silver buckle, an outrageous belt, a belt that no lady would have dreamed of wearing; and she looked like a scapegrace Diana. She asked her question with long, slim legs stretched out and her fair head tilted rather lazily back on the cushions, with a hint of the same laziness in her voice—perhaps the most obvious thing she could have said, but it made Monty Hayward fill his eyes with her, belt and all. And the Saint pulled her hair.
"What do we do, lass?" he challenged. "Well, what's wrong with a little tour of inspection? I could just do with a glimpse of the ungodly gnashing their teeth to give me an appetite for lunch."
"What's wrong with sitting where we are?" replied Monty reasonably. "We aren't getting, into mischief. You could spend several hours working out how you're going to get me across the next frontier and take the jewels with you as well. And by the way, where are the ruddy things?"