Saint's Getaway Read Online Free PDF

appraising scrutiny of the link on which he had placed his
drop of acid, he twisted the chain round his hand and broke it like a piece of string.
    With the steel box weighing freely in his
hand, he lounged against a chest of drawers; and once again he looked
across at Monty Hayward with that mocking half smile on his lips.
    “You hit the mark in once, old lad,”
he said softly. “Stan islaus was a crook. And who bumped him
off?”
    Monty deliberated.
    “Well—presumably it was one of the birds
we threw into the river.
A rival gang.”
    Simon shook his head.
    “If it was, he dried himself quickly
enough. There isn’t one damp spot on the carpet or the bed, except for
Stanislaus’s gore. No—we can rule that out. It was a rival gang, all
right, but a bunch that we haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting. Their representative
was obviously on the set the whole time, unbeknownst, only the Water Babies
forestalled him. But who were the Water Babies?”
    “Do you know?”
    “Yes,” said the Saint quietly.
“I think I know.”
    Mechanically Patricia Holm took a cigarette
from her case and lighted it. She, who knew the Saint better than anyone else living, saw clearly through the deceiving quietness of his voice—straight
through to the glinting undercarry of irrepres sible mirth that
weaved beneath. She caught his eye and read his secret in it before he spoke.
    “They were policemen,” said the
Saint.
    The words flicked through the room like a
wisk of raptur ous lightning, leaving the air prickling with suspense.
Monty froze up as though his eardrums had been stunned.
    “What?” he demanded. “Do you
mean—— ”
    “I do.” The Saint was laughing—a
wild billow of helpless jubilation that smashed the suspense like
dynamite. He flung out his arms shakily. “That’s just it, boys and
girls—I do! I mean no more and nothing less. Oh, friends, Romans,
country men—roll up and sign along the dotted line: the goods have been
delivered C. O. D.!”
    “But are you sure?”
    Simon slammed the strong-box on the chest of
drawers.
    “What else could they have been?
Stanislaus never shouted for help because he knew he wouldn’t get it.
I thought that was eccentric right from the start, but you can’t hold up
a first- class rough-house while you chew the cud over its eccentric features.
And then, when Stanislaus gave me the air, I knew I was right. Don’t you
remember what he said? ‘Ich will gar nichts sagen’ —the
conversational gambit of every arrested crook since the beginning of time,
literally translated: ‘I’m saying nothing.’ But what a mouthful that
was!”
    Monty Hayward blinked.
    “Are you telling me,” he said,
“that all the time I’ve been risking my neck to save some anaemic
little squirt from being beaten up ,by three hairy toughs, and then
cheerfully heaving the three toughs into the river—I’ve actually been saving
a nasty little crook from being arrested, and helping you to mur der three respectable
detectives?”
    “Monty, old turbot, you have so.”
Once more the Saint bowed weakly before the storm. “Oh, sacred thousand Camemberts—stand
by and fill your ears with this! … And you started it! You
lugged me into the regatta. You led these timid feet into the
mire of sin. And here we are, with the po lice after us, and
Stanislaus’s pals after us, and the birds who bumped Stanislaus off after us,
and a genuine corpse on the buffet, and an unopenable can of unclaimed
boodle on the how’s-your-father—and
I was trying to be good!”
    Monty put down his glass and rose
phlegmatically. He was a man in whom the Saint had never in his life
seen any signs of serious flustennent, but just then he seemed as dose to the verge of demonstration as he was ever likely to be.
    “I never aspired to be an outlaw myself,
if it comes to that,” he said. “Simon, I simply loathe your
sense of humour.”
    The Saint shrugged his shoulders. He was
unrepentant. And already his brain was