"Run for it!" he rapped. "This is why angels have wings!"
He thrust her on; and then his eye fell on the emergency rescue outfit in its glass-fronted case on the wall beside him. He let go his gun and put his elbow through the glass, snatching the light axe from its bracket, and ran backwards with it swinging in his hand. Everything was a matter of split seconds in that extraordinarily discreet getaway, and no one knew better than Simon Templar that only an exhibition of agility that would make cats look silly was going to skin a ninth life out of the hornets' nest that had blown up under his feet He had been labelled for the long ride from the moment he had entered that raided brake van: the urgent menace of it had been flaming at him through the atmosphere as plainly as if it had been chalked up on the wall. And the Saint felt appropriately self-effacing. ... As the leading gunman came out of the van, Simon drew back his hand and sent the axe whistling down the corridor in a long, murderous parabola. The man let out an oath and threw up his arms to save his skull—short of committing suicide, he had no option in the matter—and that distraction gave Simon the few seconds' start he needed. He raced up behind the girl and swung her into the nearest compartment, and its solitary occupant looked up from her Ethel M. Dell and displayed a familiar face freezing into a glare of indignant horror.
"Must you follow me everywhere?" she squeaked. "You and your filthy germs——"
"Madam, we were just having a little bug hunt," said the Saint soothingly; and then the woman saw the gun in his hand and rushed to the communication cord with a shrill scream.
Simon grinned faintly and glanced past her out of the window. They were running over a low embankment at the foot of which was a thick wood; he couldn't have arranged it better if he had tried—it was the one slice of luck that had come to him without a string on it that day.
"Saved us the trouble," murmured the Saint philosophically.
He was wedging his automatic at an angle between the sliding door and its frame, so that it pointed slantingly down the corridor. The train was slowing down rapidly, and he prayed that that whiskered gag would get by for as long as they took to stop. Also he had an idea that the alarm given by the frightened lady would push a hairier fly into the ointment of the ungodly than anything else that could have happened.
He looked round and saw the shadow of puzzlement on Patricia's forehead.
"Has anything gone wrong, lad?" she asked; and the question struck him as so comic that he had to laugh.
"Nothing to speak of," he said. "It's only a few rough men trying to kill us, but we've had people try that before."
"Then why did you want the train stopped?"
"Because I want to back Bugle Call for the Derby, and I've heard no news of totes in heaven. I can't think when we've been so unpopular. It seems a lot of fuss to make over one little blue diamond, but I suppose Rudolf knows best."
He went over to the other side of the compartment and opened the window wide. The train was grinding itself to a standstill, and once it came to rest there would be very little time to spare. In one corner, the apostle of strength and silence was clutching her Pekinese and moaning hysterically at intervals. Simon ruffled the dog's ears, hauled himself up with his hands on the two luggage racks, and swung his legs acrobatically over the sill.
2
Monty Hayward was a couple of coaches farther north when the train stopped.
He had begun to drift thoughtfully southward a minute or two after Patricia Holm left him. The Saint's instructions to engage someone in conversation appealed to him. He felt that a spot of light-hearted relaxation was just what he needed. And the orders he had been given seemed to leave him as free a hand as he could have desired. The prospect lifted up his spirits like an exile's dream of home.
He squeezed past a group of chattering Italians and came up beside the girl who was gazing pensively through a window near the end of the corridor. She moved aside abstractedly to let him pass, but Monty had other ideas.
"Don't you know that policemen get their flat feet from standing about all day?" he said reproachfully.
The girl looked at him critically for several seconds, and Monty endured the scrutiny without blinking. There was a curl of soft gold escaping from under one side of her rakish little hat, and her lips had a sweet curve. And then she smiled.
"Can you tell me what that station was that we just went through?" she asked.
"Ausgang," said Monty. "I saw it written up."
She laughed.
"Idiot! That means 'Way Out.' "
"Does it?" said Monty innocently. "Then I must have been thinking of some other place." He offered his cigarette case. "I gather that this isn't your first visit to these parts."
She accepted a cigarette and a light with an entire absence of self-consciousness, which was one of the most refreshing and' at the same time one of the most complimentary gestures that he had seen for a long time.
"I ought to know the language," she said. "My father was born in Munich—he didn't become an American citizen until he was three years old. But still, they say it's a young country." She had a frank carelessness of conventional snobbery that matched her natural grace of manner. "As a matter of fact, I've just finished spending a fortnight with his family. That was the excuse I made for coming over, so I couldn't get out of it"
"My father was a Plymouth Brother," said Monty rerniniscently. "He once thought of going abroad to convert the heathen, but Mother didn't trust him. Now, if he'd been a Bavarian, I might have been your cousin—and that would have been a quite different story."
"Why?"
"I should have refused to allow you to leave us without a chaperon."
"Would you?"
"I would. And then I'd have proposed myself for the job. I'm not sure that it's too late even now. Could I interest you in a thoroughly good watchdog, guaranteed house-trained and very good with children?"
She glanced at him mischievously.
"I should want to see your references."
"I was four years in my last place, lady."
"That's a long time."
"Yes, mum. I was supposed to be in for seven, but there was a riot, and I climbed over a wall."
He was confirmed in an early impression that her laugh was like a ripple of crystal bells. She had very white teeth, and eyes like amethysts, and he thought that she was far too nice to be travelling alone.
She turned back her sleeve and consulted a tiny gold watch.
"Do you think they'll ever serve tea?" she said. "I've got one of the world's great thirsts, and Germany doesn't care."
Monty had a saddening sense of anticlimax. He was starting to realize the sordid disadvantages of being a buccaneer. You can take a beauteous damsel's acquaintance by storm, but you can't offer her a cup of tea. He felt that the twentieth century was uncommonly inconsiderate to its outlaws. He tried to picture Captain Kidd in a similar predicament. "I'd love to buy you a glass of milk, my dear, but Grandma's walking the plank at five. . . ."
"I'm afraid you've beaten me," he said. "I'm not allowed to move from here until Simon gets back."
"And what's Simon doing?"
"Well, he's trying to find some crown jewels; and if he gets shot at I'm supposed to go along and get shot as well."
The girl looked at him with a slight frown. "That one's a bit too deep for me," she said.
"It's much too deep for me," Monty confessed. "But I've given up worrying about it. I don't look like a desperate character, do I?"
She contemplated him with a renewal of the detached curiosity with which she had estimated his first advance. Her ancestry might have been German, but her quiet self-possession belonged wholly to the American tradition. Monty would have counted the day well spent if he had been free to take her under his wing; but his ears were straining through the continuous clatter of the train for the first warnings of the violent and unlawful things that must soon be happening somewhere in the south, and he knew that that pleasant interlude could not last for long. He returned her gaze without embarrassment, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was wanted for murder.