to
you.”
Monty straightened the car up viciously
within a thumb’s breadth of the ditch, and slackened the pressure of his
foot on the accelerator. His eyes turned back to the road and stayed there
ominously.
“Let me get this clear,” he said.
“Are you telling me that you’ve still got the whole total of the boodle?”
“Monty, I am.”
“And the Crown Prince is chasing back to
his schloss with an entirely empty box.”
“You said it.”
“So that apart from the police being
after us for assault, bat tery, murder, and stealing a car, your pal
Rudolf will be turn ing
round to come after us and slit our throats——”
“And with any luck,” supplemented
the Saint cheerfully, “Comrade Krauss will also be raising
dust along the warpath. I left him with a pretty easy getaway in front
of him; and if he roused up at any time while the complete garrison was occupied
with the business of hallooing after me, the odds are that he made it. Which
ought to keep the entertainment from freezing up.”
This third horn on the dilemma was new to
Monty and Pa tricia. Simon Templar explained. He gave a vigorously graphic
account of his movements since he had left them to paddle their own canoes at
the K ö nigshof, and threw in a bald description
of the mediaeval sports and pastimes at the Crown Prince’s castle which sent a
momentary squirm of horror creep ing over their scalps. It took exactly five
lines of collocution to link up Comrade Krauss with the man who had vanished from the
fateful Room Twelve above the Saint’s own suite; and then the whole
tangled structure of the amazing web of circumstance in which
they were involved became as vividly apparent to the other two as it was to
the Saint himself. And the Saint chuckled.
“Boys and girls, my idea of a quiet
holiday is just this!”
“Well, it may be your idea of a quiet
holiday, but it isn’t mine,” said Monty Hayward morosely. “I’ve got a
wife and three kiddies in England, and what are they going to think?”
“Wire ‘em to come out and join you,” said the Saint
dispas sionately. “We may be wanting
all the help we can get”
Monty glowered along the track of the headlights, holding the car steadily on its northward course. They
had whizzed through Maurach while
Simon was talking, and now they were speeding up the eastern shore of the
Achensee. The moon had come up over the mountains, and its strengthening
light bur nished the still waters of the
lake with a sheen like polished jet. Far beyond the lake, behind the
black hump of the nearer slopes, an
ice-capped peak reared its white head like an enormous beacon, towering in
lonely magnificence against a vivid gun-metal sky, so brilliant and
luminous that the six forlorn lights that
burned in Pertisau looked like ridiculous yellow pin-points beneath it, and their trailing reflections in the water seemed merely niggling impertinences. The night
had put on a beauty that was
startling, a splendour that only comes to the high places of the earth. The Saint was filling his eyes. It was a night such as he had seen high up in the Andes
above Encantada , or again on the Plateau d’Alzo in the heart of
Corsica, where the air may be so clear that
the mountains ten miles away seem to be leaning over to fall upon you on
the broad ridge that will bring you
presently to the Grotto des Anges. The
queer streak of paganism in him that took no count of time or occasion touched him with its spell.
Patricia was un locking the handcuffs
from his wrists; as they fell away, she found her hands caught in one of his.
“The crown of the world,” he said.
And, knowing her man, she understood. The
clear blue of the night was in his eyes, the gorgeous madness that
made him what he was thrilled in his touch. His words seemed to
hold nothing absurd, nothing incongruous—only the devil-may- care
attar of Saintliness that would have stopped to admire a view on
the way to its own funeral.
She smiled.
“I love you when
you.”
Monty straightened the car up viciously
within a thumb’s breadth of the ditch, and slackened the pressure of his
foot on the accelerator. His eyes turned back to the road and stayed there
ominously.
“Let me get this clear,” he said.
“Are you telling me that you’ve still got the whole total of the boodle?”
“Monty, I am.”
“And the Crown Prince is chasing back to
his schloss with an entirely empty box.”
“You said it.”
“So that apart from the police being
after us for assault, bat tery, murder, and stealing a car, your pal
Rudolf will be turn ing
round to come after us and slit our throats——”
“And with any luck,” supplemented
the Saint cheerfully, “Comrade Krauss will also be raising
dust along the warpath. I left him with a pretty easy getaway in front
of him; and if he roused up at any time while the complete garrison was occupied
with the business of hallooing after me, the odds are that he made it. Which
ought to keep the entertainment from freezing up.”
This third horn on the dilemma was new to
Monty and Pa tricia. Simon Templar explained. He gave a vigorously graphic
account of his movements since he had left them to paddle their own canoes at
the K ö nigshof, and threw in a bald description
of the mediaeval sports and pastimes at the Crown Prince’s castle which sent a
momentary squirm of horror creep ing over their scalps. It took exactly five
lines of collocution to link up Comrade Krauss with the man who had vanished from the
fateful Room Twelve above the Saint’s own suite; and then the whole
tangled structure of the amazing web of circumstance in which
they were involved became as vividly apparent to the other two as it was to
the Saint himself. And the Saint chuckled.
“Boys and girls, my idea of a quiet
holiday is just this!”
“Well, it may be your idea of a quiet
holiday, but it isn’t mine,” said Monty Hayward morosely. “I’ve got a
wife and three kiddies in England, and what are they going to think?”
“Wire ‘em to come out and join you,” said the Saint
dispas sionately. “We may be wanting
all the help we can get”
Monty glowered along the track of the headlights, holding the car steadily on its northward course. They
had whizzed through Maurach while
Simon was talking, and now they were speeding up the eastern shore of the
Achensee. The moon had come up over the mountains, and its strengthening
light bur nished the still waters of the
lake with a sheen like polished jet. Far beyond the lake, behind the
black hump of the nearer slopes, an
ice-capped peak reared its white head like an enormous beacon, towering in
lonely magnificence against a vivid gun-metal sky, so brilliant and
luminous that the six forlorn lights that
burned in Pertisau looked like ridiculous yellow pin-points beneath it, and their trailing reflections in the water seemed merely niggling impertinences. The night
had put on a beauty that was
startling, a splendour that only comes to the high places of the earth. The Saint was filling his eyes. It was a night such as he had seen high up in the Andes
above Encantada , or again on the Plateau d’Alzo in the heart of
Corsica, where the air may be so clear that
the mountains ten miles away seem to be leaning over to fall upon you on
the broad ridge that will bring you
presently to the Grotto des Anges. The
queer streak of paganism in him that took no count of time or occasion touched him with its spell.
Patricia was un locking the handcuffs
from his wrists; as they fell away, she found her hands caught in one of his.
“The crown of the world,” he said.
And, knowing her man, she understood. The
clear blue of the night was in his eyes, the gorgeous madness that
made him what he was thrilled in his touch. His words seemed to
hold nothing absurd, nothing incongruous—only the devil-may- care
attar of Saintliness that would have stopped to admire a view on
the way to its own funeral.
She smiled.
“I love you when
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