"They'll be waiting for us at the poste restante in Cologne— where moth and rust may corrupt, but Rudolfs will have a job to break through and steal."
Monty scratched his head.
"I'm still trying to get that clear," he said. "What have you done with them?"
"Bunged 'em into the post, laddie—all done up in brown paper, with bits of string and sealing wax and everything. As I told Rudolf. They're on their way now—they might even be on this very train—but there's no detective on earth who could prove now that I've ever had anything to do with them, even if he thought of looking for them in the right place. In this game the great idea is to have brains," said the Saint modestly.
Monty digested the pronouncement with becoming gravity. And then Patricia stood up.
"Let's go, boy," she said recklessly; and the Saint hauled himself up with a laugh.
"And shall we dally with the archdeacon or gambol with the gun artist?"
He framed the question in a tone that required no answer, balancing himself easily in the swaying carriage, with a cigarette between his lips and one hand shielding his lighter—he was as unanswerable as a laughing Whirlwind with hell-for-leather blue eyes. He was not even thinking of alternatives.
And then he saw the hole that had been bored through the partition on his left—just an inch or two below the mesh of the luggage grid.
The raw, white edges of it seemed to blaze into his vision out of the smooth, drab surface of the varnished woodwork, pinning him where he stood in a sudden hush of corrosive immobility. Then his gaze flicked down to the half-dozen fresh white splinters that lay on the seat, and the smile in his eyes hardened to a narrow glitter of steel.
"Or should we just sit here and behave ourselves?" he murmured; and the change in his voice was so contrasting that the other two stared at him.
Monty recovered the use of his tongue first.
"That's the most sensible thing I've heard you say for a long time," he remarked, as if he still doubted whether he should believe his ears. "You can't be feeling well."
"But, Simon——"
Patricia broke in with a different incredulity. And the Saint dropped a hand on her shoulder.
His other hand went out in a grim gesture that travelled straight to the hole in the partition.
"Let's keep our heads, Pat." The smile was filtering back into his voice, but it was so gentle that only the most sensitive ear could have picked it out. "Monty's the moderating influence— and he may be right. We don't want to make things unnecessarily difficult. There's a long journey in front of us, and I'm not sure that I should object to a little rest. I'm not so young as I was."
He subsided heavily into his corner with a profound sigh; and the visible part of his audience tore their eyes from the tell-tale perforation in the wall and looked at him in the tense dawning of comprehension.
"Good-night, my children," said the Saint sleepily.
But he was reaching to his feet again as he said it, and there was not a trace of sleepiness in one inch of the movement. It was like the measured straightening of a bent spring. And it was just as he came dead upright that a dull thud seemed to bump itself on the partition, clearly audible above the monotonous rattling of the wheels.
"And happy dreams," said the Saint, in the softest of all whispers.
He slid out soundlessly into the corridor. Down towards the end of it he saw the back of a man lurching from side to side in a clumsy attempt to run, and instinctively the Saint's step quickened. Then he glanced sidelong into the next compartment as he passed it—he was merely satisfying a professional desire to see the other end of the listening-hole which had tapped through into his private business, but what he saw there made him pull up with his fingers hooking round the edge of the sliding door. Without another thought he shot it back along its grooves and let himself in. He went in quietly and without fear, for the eyes of the man who was crumpled up in the far corner looked at him with the calm greeting of one who has already seen beyond the Curtain. It was Josef Krauss, with one hand clutched to his side and the grey pallor of death in his face.
VIII. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR CONTINUED TO BE
DISCREET, AND MONTY HAYWARD IMPROVED
THE SHINING HOUR
SIMON TEMPLAR pulled the door shut behind him and went over to the dying man. He started to fumble with the buttons of the stained black waistcoat, but Krauss only smiled.
"Lassen Sie es nur," he said huskily. "It is not worth the time. The old fox has finished his journey."
Simon nodded. The first glance had told him that there was nothing he could do. He sat down beside the stricken thief and supported him with an arm round his shoulders; and Krauss looked at him with the same calm and patient eyes.
"I have only seen you once before, Herr Templar. That was when you saved me from the screw." A shiver passed over the man's bulky frame. "If I had lived, I should have repaid that kindness by robbing you. You know that?"
"Does it matter?" asked the Saint.
Krauss shook his head. There were beads of perspiration starting through the pink grease paint on his face, and each breath cost him an effort.
"Now the time is too short for these things," he said.
Simon eased him up a few inches, settling him more comfortably into the corner. He knew that the end could be no more than a few minutes away, and he had time to spare. The man who had fired the shot, whose back he had seen scuttling down the corridor, could wait those few minutes for his turn. However the killer might choose to dispose of himself meanwhile, he would still be available when he was wanted—unless he elected to step right off the train and break his neck. And the Saint would watch the old fox creep into the last covert, according to the rules of the game as he knew them. It had never occurred to him to refuse the unspoken appeal that had leapt at him out of the doomed man's weary eyes as he sidled that casual glance into the compartment; and yet he never guessed on what a strange twist of the trail that unthinking chivalry was to lead him.
He looked at the litter of curled wood shavings on the opposite seat, and then up at the partition.
"I suppose you heard all you wanted to?" he said.
The reply came as a surprise to him, in a wry grin that warped its way across the man's face of bitter fatalism.
"I heard nothing, mein lieber Freund. Marcovitch heard— that little cub of the young jackal. If my gun had not stuck in my pocket you would have found him here instead of me."
"He was listening here when you found him?"
"Ja. And I think he has heard too much. You had better kill him quickly, Herr Templar—he will be troublesome."
Krauss coughed painfully; and there was blood on his handkerchief. Then he raised his eyes and saw the uniform of another ticket inspector in the corridor outside, and he seemed to smile cynically under his make-up. As the door grated open again he pulled himself together with an effort of will that must have been almost super-human. It was the most eerie performance that the Saint had ever seen, and it left him dumb with wonder at the magnificent sardonic courage of it.
Krauss jerked himself almost upright in his corner and sat there unsupported, with his hands clasped calmly on his lap. He met the Saint's eyes expressionlessly, and spoke in a voice that rang out oddly with the iron strength of his self-control— a voice that hadn't the minutest tremor in it—as if he were merely setting the trivial capstone on an ephemeral argument.
"After all," he said, "when one is confronted with a summons, one can still pay one's debts with a good grace."
Simon groped around for his ticket and offered it to be clipped.