Hayward was the only one who seemed to
have es caped the Saint’s own contagious exhilaration. He concen trated his
eyes on the task of guiding the car and thought that it was all a pretty bad show. He said so.
“If you’d only left that jewellery as it
was, you chump,” he said—having only just thought of it
himself—“we might have been able to tell the police we’d found it on
the road and were on our way to return it.”
Simon shook his head.
“We couldn’t have told them that,
Monty.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t have been
true,” answered the Saint, with awful solemnity.
“You owl!” snarled Monty Hayward;
and relapsed into his nightmare.
It was a nightmare in which he had been
groping about for so long that he had lost the power of protesting
effectively against anything that it required him to do. Presently,
at the Saint’s bidding, he stopped the car for a moment while he re moved his police uniform, which
went into the nearest clump of bushes. Then he suffered himself to be told to
drive unhes itatingly up to the frontier post
which showed up in the glare of their
headlights a few minutes later, where he obediently applied his brakes and
waited in a kind of numb resignation while
the guards stepped up and made their formal inquisi tions. Every instinct that he possessed urged him
to turn tail and fly—to leap out of
the car and make a desperate attempt to
plunge unseen into Germany through the darkness of the woods on their
left—even, in one frantic moment, to let in the clutch again and smash recklessly through the flimsy barrier across
the road into what looked like unassailable security be yond. That he remained ungalvanized by all these natural impulses was
due solely to the paralytic inertia of the nightmare which had him
inextricably in its grip. His, it appeared, not to reason why; his but to sit still and wait for somebody to clout him over the bean—and a more depressing fate for
anyone who had passed unscathed
through the entire excitement of the last
war he found it difficult to imagine. He sat mute behind the wheel, endeavouring to make himself as
invisible as pos sible, while the
Saint exhibited passports and answered the usual questions. The Saint was as cool as a cucumber. He chat tered affably throughout the delay, with an
impermeable ab sence of
self-consciousness, and smiled benignly into the light that was flashed
over them. The eternity of prickling suspense which
Monty Hayward endured passed over the Saint’s unruffled head like a soothing zephyr; and when at last the signal was given and they moved on, and the Saint
leaned back with a gentle exhalation
of breath and searched for his cigarette case, his immutable serenity
seemed little less than a deliberate
affront.
“I suppose you know what you’re doing,
brother,” said Monty
Hayward, as quietly as he could, “but it seems pretty daft to me.”
“You bet I knew,” said the Saint,
and to Monty’s surprise he said it just as quietly. “It was simply a
matter of taking a chance on the clock. If you hadn’t hit that cop at the K ö nigs hof quite so hard, it wouldn’t have
been so easy; but we had to hope we were still a length or two in
front of the hue and cry. There’s no point in jumping your fences
before you come to them. But, believe me, I had that patrol covered from
my pocket the whole time, and what might have happened if we’d been
unlucky is just nobody’s business.”
Monty Hayward readjusted his impressions
slowly and reluc tantly. And then suddenly he shot one of his
extraordinarily keen
glances at the sober face of the man beside him—a glance that was tempered with the ghost of a smile.
“If we kept straight ahead and drove in
relays,” he said, “we might make the Dutch frontier to-day. But one
gathers that it wouldn’t be quite so simple as that.”
“Solomon said it first,” assented
the Saint bluntly. “We shan’t take any more frontiers in our stride,
and I
have es caped the Saint’s own contagious exhilaration. He concen trated his
eyes on the task of guiding the car and thought that it was all a pretty bad show. He said so.
“If you’d only left that jewellery as it
was, you chump,” he said—having only just thought of it
himself—“we might have been able to tell the police we’d found it on
the road and were on our way to return it.”
Simon shook his head.
“We couldn’t have told them that,
Monty.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t have been
true,” answered the Saint, with awful solemnity.
“You owl!” snarled Monty Hayward;
and relapsed into his nightmare.
It was a nightmare in which he had been
groping about for so long that he had lost the power of protesting
effectively against anything that it required him to do. Presently,
at the Saint’s bidding, he stopped the car for a moment while he re moved his police uniform, which
went into the nearest clump of bushes. Then he suffered himself to be told to
drive unhes itatingly up to the frontier post
which showed up in the glare of their
headlights a few minutes later, where he obediently applied his brakes and
waited in a kind of numb resignation while
the guards stepped up and made their formal inquisi tions. Every instinct that he possessed urged him
to turn tail and fly—to leap out of
the car and make a desperate attempt to
plunge unseen into Germany through the darkness of the woods on their
left—even, in one frantic moment, to let in the clutch again and smash recklessly through the flimsy barrier across
the road into what looked like unassailable security be yond. That he remained ungalvanized by all these natural impulses was
due solely to the paralytic inertia of the nightmare which had him
inextricably in its grip. His, it appeared, not to reason why; his but to sit still and wait for somebody to clout him over the bean—and a more depressing fate for
anyone who had passed unscathed
through the entire excitement of the last
war he found it difficult to imagine. He sat mute behind the wheel, endeavouring to make himself as
invisible as pos sible, while the
Saint exhibited passports and answered the usual questions. The Saint was as cool as a cucumber. He chat tered affably throughout the delay, with an
impermeable ab sence of
self-consciousness, and smiled benignly into the light that was flashed
over them. The eternity of prickling suspense which
Monty Hayward endured passed over the Saint’s unruffled head like a soothing zephyr; and when at last the signal was given and they moved on, and the Saint
leaned back with a gentle exhalation
of breath and searched for his cigarette case, his immutable serenity
seemed little less than a deliberate
affront.
“I suppose you know what you’re doing,
brother,” said Monty
Hayward, as quietly as he could, “but it seems pretty daft to me.”
“You bet I knew,” said the Saint,
and to Monty’s surprise he said it just as quietly. “It was simply a
matter of taking a chance on the clock. If you hadn’t hit that cop at the K ö nigs hof quite so hard, it wouldn’t have
been so easy; but we had to hope we were still a length or two in
front of the hue and cry. There’s no point in jumping your fences
before you come to them. But, believe me, I had that patrol covered from
my pocket the whole time, and what might have happened if we’d been
unlucky is just nobody’s business.”
Monty Hayward readjusted his impressions
slowly and reluc tantly. And then suddenly he shot one of his
extraordinarily keen
glances at the sober face of the man beside him—a glance that was tempered with the ghost of a smile.
“If we kept straight ahead and drove in
relays,” he said, “we might make the Dutch frontier to-day. But one
gathers that it wouldn’t be quite so simple as that.”
“Solomon said it first,” assented
the Saint bluntly. “We shan’t take any more frontiers in our stride,
and I
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