The girl smiled.
"I guess I haven't much choice."
Simon's left hand saluted her. He had time to play Claude Duval with the most charming reporter he had ever met, but even while he did it he was wondering how much grace the gods were going to give him to gather up the loose ends. His glance transferred itself to the clock over the sergeant's desk. Twenty minutes after seven—and almost dark outside. . . . Yet it never occurred to him to doubt whether the wash and brush-up that bad done so much to enhance his beauty had been a wise expenditure of time. That power of thinking ahead, almost intuitively, into the most distant possibilities, and preparing for them long before they arose, was the gift which had made the grand moguls of the Law gnash their teeth over him for so many years in vain. And that night he might need it all.
The tableau remained mute while Monty passed from one man to the next, making a collection of their weapons. The sergeant was unarmed. Marcovitch yielded an automatic and a long thin-bladed knife. The Crown Prince had a tiny nickel-plated pistol. Simon frowned a little—he was expecting something else. He waited until Monty had retired again to his position with his pockets weighted down by the load of armoury, and then he crooked a coaxing finger.
"Marcovitch—little blossom—come hither! You're too retiring—and we want to know all the secrets of your underwear."
The Russian came forward sullenly. Monty Hayward and Patricia were covering the other men, and the Saint's automatic had suddenly taken entire charge of him. Its round gleaming barrel had slanted up and settled in a dead line with the bridge of his nose, so that he stared down the black tunnel from which sudden death could spurt into his brain at a touch.
"Right here—right up close to papa, sweetheart!"
The Saint's voice rapped at him with a ring that made him start. And Marcovitch came on. He fought every inch of the way, with his lips snarling—but he came on. The single black eye of the gun dragged him inexorably across the room, step by step—that and the living bleak blue eyes behind it.
He stopped in front of the Saint, a yard away; and the blue eyes looked him over slowly and thoughtfully.
Then the Saint's left hand flashed out at him. Marcovitch cringed from the blow that he could not avoid. But the mistake was his—the blow never materialized. Simon had done his job before Marcovitch knew what was happening. There was the sharp splitting tear of rending cloth, and one half of Marcovitch's coat hung off him down to the elbow. In another second it was joined by half of his shirt. And the Saint grinned amiably.
"Wool next the skin, Uglyvitch?" he murmured. "Dear me! And I thought you were a tough guy. . . ."
Something else was revealed besides the woollen vest, and that was a band of tape that stretched across the man's chest and disappeared under his armpit. A neat little bundle hung there, tied in a soiled linen handkerchief slung from the tape which passed over the opposite shoulder.
Simon ripped it off. There was another similar bundle concealed under the man's left arm.
"An old game—which you ought to have remembered, Monty," said the Saint. "He might just as well have had a gun there. . . . You can go back to your place in the bread line now, Comrade."
He pushed Marcovitch away. The man's face was white with fury, but Simon Templar could endure hardships like that with singular fortitude. The two knotted handkerchiefs filled his spread hand, and their contents crunched juicily when he squeezed them in his fingers.
He gave the Crown Prince a broadside of his most seraphic smile.
"Dear old Gaffer Rudolf!" he drawled. "So that's the simple end of an awful lot of fuss. Well, well, well! We none of us grow younger, do we?—as we've been telling each other several times to-day."
The prince gazed at him passionlessly.
"Would it be in order to congratulate you?" he murmured; and the Saint laughed.
"Perhaps—when we've finished."
Simon turned to Monty.
"If you'd like something more to do, old dear," he said, "you might try and find some more handcuffs. We shall want six pairs—if the station'll run to it. Hands only for Rudolf and Marcovitch—they've got to walk. Hands and feet for the Law —we don't want them at all. And mind how you go around that sergeant. He looks as if he might burst at any moment, and you wouldn't want to get splashed with his supper."
Monty searched around. After a few moments he discovered a locker that was plentifully stocked with both hand and leg irons; he came back trailing the chains behind him. Under the Saint's directions the two police officers were efficiently manacled together; and finally an extra pair of handcuffs fastened them to a ringbolt set in the wall, which had apparently been used before for the restraint of refractory prisoners.
The prince smoked tranquilly until his turn came; and then he detached the cigarette end from the long jade holder, placed the holder leisurely in an inside pocket, and extended his own hands for the bracelets.
"This is a unique experience," he remarked, as Monty locked the cuffs on his wrists. "May I ask where we are to go?"
"Upstairs," said the Saint coolly. "We've got a little talk coming, and the air's better up there."
The prince raised his sensitive eyebrows, but he made no reply.
They went up the stairs in a strange procession: Patricia and Nina Walden leading, the Saint going up backwards after them and covering the cortege, Prince Rudolf and Marcovitch following him, and Monty Hayward bringing up the rear. The prince's face remained impassive. Simon knew that that impassivity belied the workings of that quiet ruthless brain; but the prince and Marcovitch were firmly sandwiched between two fires, and they could do nothing—at the moment. And the Saint didn't care. The prince must have known it— even as the two men in the room above must have known. It was significant that Rudolf had been very silent, ever since that playful séance in the charge room had received its staggering interruption.
"This way, boys."
Simon opened the door of the police chief's office and let the caravan file past him. He went in last—closed the door and leaned back on it.
"Sit down."
Prince Rudolf sank into a chair. Monty prodded Marcovitch into another with the nose of his Luger. And the Saint cleared a space on the desk and sat there, dumping the two knotted handkerchiefs beside him. He put away his gun and opened the bundles, pouring the contents of both onto a single handkerchief in a shimmer of rainbow flames that seemed to light up the whole dingy room.
"The time has come, Rudolf, for us to have a little reckoning," he said; and once again, for no reason that the others could think of, he was speaking in German. And yet to Monty Hayward there was no difference, for the man who spoke was still the Saint, making even that stodgy language as vivid and pliable as his own native tongue. "We have a few things to learn—and you can tell us about them. And we'll have all the jewels out to encourage you. Fill your eyes with them, Rudolf. You used to be a rich man. But just for this quarter of a million pounds' worth of stones you were ready to kill men and torture them; you were ready to run up a list of murders that'd get anyone hanged three times—and frame them onto Monty and me. Which was very unkind of you, Rudy, after all the fun we had together in the old days. But you aren't denying any of it, are you?"
The prince shrugged.
"Why should I? It was unfortunate that you personally should be the victim, but——"
"Highness!"
Marcovitch sprang up from his chair. And at the same instant the Saint came off the desk like a streak of lightning. His fist smashed into the Russian's mouth and sent him reeling back.
"I never have liked your voice, Uglyvitch," said the Saint evenly. "And it's rude to butt in like that. Gag him, Monty."
Simon lighted another cigarette while the order was being carried out. It had been a close call, that; but his face showed no sign of it. He had been watching Marcovitch from the start. It was odd how an inferior mentality might sometimes feel brute suspicions before they came to the more highly geared intelligence.