"Let's be moving," he said; and Monty Hayward stowed his pipe away again with a sigh.
"Where do you think we could move to?" he asked.
And once again it seemed to Patricia Holm that the breath of Saintly laughter in the air was like the sound of distant trumpets rallying a forlorn venture on the last frontiers of outlawry.
"We can move out of here. It won't be fifteen minutes after that train gets into Treuchtlingen before there'll be a cordon of gendarmerie packing around this neighbourhood closer than fat women round a remnant counter. And I've got a date with Marcovitch that they mightn't want me to keep."
He flicked the automatic adroitly out of Monty's pocket and dropped it into his own; and then a blur of colour moved in the borders of his vision, and his glance shot suddenly across Monty's shoulder.
"Holy smoke!" said the Saint. "What's this?"
Monty turned round.
It may be chronicled as a matter of solemn historical fact that the second in which he saw what had provoked the Saint's awed ejaculation was one of the most pregnant moments of his life. It was a back-hander from the gods which zoomed clean under his guard and knocked the power of protest out of him. To a man who had laboured so long and steadfastly to uphold the principles of a righteous and sober life in the face of unlimited discouragement, it was the unkindest cut of all.
He stood and stared at the approaching nucleus of his Waterloo with all the emotions of a temperance agitator who discovers that some practical joker has replenished with neat gin the glass of water from which he has just gulped an ostentatious draught of strength for his concluding peroration. He felt that Providence had gone out of its way to plant a banana skin directly under his inoffensive heel. If his guardian angel had bobbed up smirking at that moment with any chatty remarks about the. weather, Monty would unhesitatingly have socked him under the jaw. And yet the slim girl who was walking towards them across the clearing seemed brazenly unaware that she was making Nemesis look like a decrepit washerwoman going berserk on a couple of small ports. She was actually smiling at him; and the unblushing impudence of her put the finishing touch to Monty Hayward's débâcle.
"It's—it's someone I met on the train," he said faintly, and knew that Patricia Holm and the Saint were leaning on each other's shoulders in a convulsion of Homeric mirth.
It was Monty's only consolation that his Waterloo could scarcely have overtaken him in a more attractive guise. The awful glare with which he regarded her arrival almost sprained the muscles of his conscience, but it disconcerted her even less than the deplorable exhibition that was going on behind him.
"Hullo, Mr. Bandit," she said calmly.
The Saint freed himself unsteadily from Patricia's embrace. He staggered up alongside the stricken prophet.
"Shall we have her money or her life?" he crooned. "Or aren't we going to be introduced?"
"I think that would be a good idea," said the girl; and Monty called up all his battered reserves of self-control.
He glanced truculently around him.
"I'm Monty Hayward," he said. "This is Patricia Holm; and that nasty mess is Simon Templar. You can take it that they're both very pleased to meet you. Now, are we allowed to know who you are?"
"I'm Nina Walden." The girl's introspective survey considered Simon interestedly. "Aren't you the Saint?"
Simon bowed.
"Lady, you must move in distinguished circles."
"I do. I'm on the crime staff of the Evening Gazette—New York—and there's nothing more distinguished than that outside a jail. I thought I recognized your name."
She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag, placed one in her mouth, and raised her eyebrows impersonally for a light. The Saint supplied it.
"And did you get left behind in the excitement?" he murmured.
"I arranged to be left. Your friend told me there was a story coming—he didn't mean to give away any secrets, but he said one word too many when the train stopped. And then when he jumped out and left me floating, I just couldn't resist it. It was like having a murder committed on your own doorstep. Everyone was hanging out on this side of the track, so I stepped out on the other side while they were busy and lay low under the embankment. I walked over as soon as the train pulled out, but I certainly thought I should have to chase you a long way. It was nice of you to wait for me." She smiled at him shamelessly, without a quiver of those downright eyes. "Gee—I knew I was going to get a story, but I never guessed it'd be anything like this!"
The Saint brought his lighter slowly back to his pocket. On his left, Monty Hayward was stomaching that final pulverizing wallop of revelation with a look of pained reproach on his face which was far more eloquent than any flow of speech; on his right, Patricia Holm was standing a little aloof, with her hands tucked into the slack of that swashbuckling belt of hers, silently enjoying the humorous flavour of the scene; but the Saint had flashed on far beyond those things. A wave of the inspired opportunism which could never let any situation become static under the ceaseless play of his imagination had lifted him up to a new level of audacity that the others had yet to reach. The downfall of Monty Hayward was complete: so be it: the Saint saw no need to ask for further details—he had thrust back that supreme moment into the index of episodes which might be chortled over in later years, and he was working on to the object which was just then so much more urgently important Nina Walden was there—and the Saint liked her nerve.
"So you're a dyed-in-the-wool reporter?" he drawled; and the girl nodded bewitchingly.
"Yes, sir."
"And you've got all your papers—everything you need to guarantee you as many facilities as a foreign journalist can corner in this country?"
"I think so."
"And you want the biggest story of your life—a front-page three-column splash with banner lines and black type?"
"I'm hoping to get it."
The Saint gave her smile for smile. And the Saintly smile was impetuous with a mercurial resolve that paralleled the swaggering alignment of his shoulders.
"Nina, the story's yours. I've always wanted to make one newspaper get its facts about me right before I die. But the story isn't quite finished yet, and it never will be if you're in too much of a hurry for it. We were just pushing on to finish it—and we've wasted enough time already. Come on with us—leave the interviews till afterwards—and I'll give you the scoop of the year. I don't know what it is, but I know it'll be a scoop. Wipe all your moral scruples off the map— help me as much as I'll help you—and it's a monopoly. Would you like it?"
The girl picked a loose flake of tobacco from the edge of her red mouth.
"Reporters are born without moral scruples," she said candidly. "You're on."
"We're leaving now," said the Saint.
He flung an arm round Patricia's waist and turned her towards a path which led out of the clearing away from the embankment, a grass-paved ride broad enough for them to walk abreast; and if she had been a few pounds lighter his exuberance would have swung her off her feet. Even after all those years of adventure in which they had been together he would never cease to amaze her: his incredible resilience could conceive nothing more fantastic than the idea of ultimate failure. In him it had none of the qualities of mere humdrum doggedness that it would have had in anyone of a more dull and commonplace fibre; it was as swift as a steel blade, a gay challenge to disaster that never doubted the abiding favour of the stars. It if had been anything less he could never have set forth in such a vein to find the end of that chequered story. Marcovitch was gone. The jewels were gone. Prince Rudolf had become an incalculable quantity whose contact with the current march of events might weave in anywhere between Munich and the North Pole. And three tarnished brigands plus a magazine-cover historian, who had been lucky to escape from the last skirmish with their lives, were left high and dry in an area of strange country that would shortly be seething with armed hostility. The task in front of them might have made hunting needles in haystacks seem like an idle pastime for blind octogenarians; but the Saint saw it only as a side road to victory.