Free Saint's Getaway by Leslie Charteris

to keep his glands active from an armchair. And if he had
to be decoyed into that sort of thing, he most unequivocally wanted it
to be gradual. A minor job of shop-lifting, if neces sary, or an evening
out with a pickpocket, would have satis fied his craving for excitement for a long
time.
    But since he had been blamelessly landed up
to his neck in a kind of thieves’ picnic in which the disposal of
corpses and gagged gunmen was supposed to be merely an elementary exercise
in initiative, he found himself taking an interest in the affair which he
tried to persuade himself was purely mor bid. He frisked
Weissmann’s clothes with an almost profes sional callousness and
brought a selection of papers back with him to the sitting room.
    “While you’re getting your initiative
tuned up,” he said, “it might be helpful if we knew something
more about Stanis laus.”
    Patricia came and looked over his shoulder as
he ran through the meagre supply of documents. There were a couple of letters
on heavily scented pink notepaper, addressed to Heinrich Weissmann at
the Dome, Boulevard Montparnasse , Paris, which disclosed nothing of interest
to anyone wishing to have the strength of ten; a letter of credit
for two thousand marks, issued by the Dresdner Bank in K ö ln; the counterfoil of a sleeping-car ticket from
Zurich to Milan; and a receipted bill from a hotel in Basle.
    “He certainly did his best to shake off
the hue and cry,” said Monty; “but does it tell us
anything else?”
    “What about that?” asked Patricia,
turning over one of the pink envelopes.
    On the flap was a pencilled line of writing:
    Zr 12 H K ö nigshof
    “Room Twelve, Hotel K ö nigshof,” Monty translated promptly.
“Looks as if this was the very place he was making for.”
    The girl bit her lip.
    “It’d be a frightful coincidence—— ”
    “I don’t know. Those squiggly marks in
the corner—they’re just the sort of pattern a fellow draws at the telephone.
Stan islaus would naturally have some note of the place where he was
supposed to deliver the boodle. And there’s no reason why it
shouldn’t be here. This is the most slap-up hotel for miles around—the
very place that a super crook would make his headquarters—— ”
Monty slewed round in his chair and regarded her expectantly. “Suppose the
Big Noise was sitting right over our heads?”
    Patricia jumped up.
    “But that’s just what he is doing, if
that address is right! Room Twelve is on the first floor. When we came here they offered us
Eleven, but Simon wouldn’t have it. He tried to get Twelve, which has a fire
escape outside, but it was taken yes terday——”
    “I don’t see that it’s anything to get
excited about, anyway,” said Monty soothingly. “If it’s true, it only
means that another bunch of toughs may be crashing in here at any moment to commit a
few more murders.”
    “I’m going to run up the fire escape and
see if I can see any thing.”
    Monty looked at her in frank amazement.
    For the first instant he thought she was
bluffing. He had instinctively salted down her laconic description of the
Saint’s inexorable training. And then he saw the recklessness of the smile that
parted her fresh lips, the eager vitality of her slim body, the
devil-may-care light in her blue eyes; and the ban tering challenge that
trembled on the tip of his tongue went unuttered. There was a
living embodiment of Saintliness in her that startled. He smiled.
    “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he
remarked soberly, “Simon’s a damned lucky man. And you won’t run up
the fire escape,
because I’m going to.”
    He went out onto the lawn, located the
stairway on his left, and groped his way up the narrow iron steps. There was
only one window on the first floor which could possibly answer the vague
description he had been given, and no light showed through it. He paused on the
grating beside it and wondered what on earth he should do next. To scale an
awkward species of