Saint's Getaway Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the leather
covering. A couple of shrewd slits with a penknife fetched the covering
away altogether, and the metal box was comprehensively revealed—one of the
compactest and solidest little portable safes
that the Saint had ever seen.
    Simon ran over its smooth surface with an
expertly pessi mistic eye. The lid fitted down so perfectly that it
required the perspicacity of a lynx to spot the join at all. The edge
of a razor couldn’t have sidled into that emaciated fissure—much less the claw of the
finest jemmy ever made. The only notable break that occurred anywhere
in that gleaming case-hardened rhomboid was the small square panel in one side
where the com bination lock showed narrow segments of its four milled
and lettered
chrome-steel wheels—and even those were matched and balanced into their aperture so infrangibly that a bacillus on hunger strike would have felt cramped between
them.
    “Can you open it?” asked Monty; and
the Saint shook his head.
    “Not with anything in my outfit. The
bloke who made this sardine can knew his job.”
    He snapped open one of his valises, and
produced a bulging canvas tool-kit which he spread out on the bed. He slid out
a small knife-bladed file, tested it speculatively on his thumb, and discarded it. In its place
he selected a black vulcanized rubber flask.
With a short rod of the same material he care fully deposited a drop of straw-coloured liquid on one of the links of the chain, while Monty watched him
curiously.
    “Quieter and easier,” explained the
Saint, replacing the flask in his holdall. “Hydrofluoric
acid—the hungriest liquor known to chemistry. Eats practically
anything.”
    Monty raised his eyebrows.
    “Wouldn’t it eat through the sardine
can?”
    “Not in twenty years. They’ve got the
measure of these gravies now, where they build their strong-boxes. But the chain
didn’t come from the same factory. Which is just as well for us. I
can’t help feeling it would have been darned em barrassing to have to
wade through life with a strong-box per manently attached to
the bargain basement of a morgue. It’s not hygienic.”
    He lighted a cigarette and paced the room
thoughtfully for a few moments. On one of his rounds he stopped to open
the communicating door wide, and stood there listening for a second.
Then he went on.
    “One or two things are getting
clearer,” he said. “As I see it, the key to the whole
shemozzle is inside that there sardine can. The warriors who
tried to heave Stanislaus into the river wanted it, and it’s
also one of the three possible reasons for the present litter of dead
bodies. Stanislaus was bumped, either (a) because he
had the can, (b) because he might have made a noise, (c) because
he might have squealed—or for a combina tion of all three
reasons. The man who knifed him tried to grab the contents of the
attach é case and was flummoxed by the sardine can within. Not having
with him any means of open ing it or
separating it from Stanislaus, he returned rapidly to the tall timber. And one detail you can shunt
right out of your minds is any idea that the contents of the said can are
respect able enough to be mentioned
in law-abiding circles anywhere.”
    “Bank messengers have been known to carry bags chained to their wrists,” Monty advanced
temperately.
    “Yeah.” Simon was withering.
“At half-past two in the morn ing, the streets are stiff with ‘em.
Diplomatic messengers have the same habits. They’re recruited from the runts of the earth; and one of their qualifications is to be so
nitwitted they don’t know a friend
when they see one. When they’re attacked by howling mobs of hoodlums, they never let out a single cry for help—they flop about in the thickest part of the
uproar and never try to get saved.
Stanislaus must have been an ambas sador!”
    Monty nodded composedly.
    “I know what you mean,” he said.
“He must have been a crook.”
    The Saint laughed and turned back to the bed.
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