Free The Saint in Trouble by Leslie Charteris

and out of the quadrangle.
    The scream of the engine drowned the sound of a shot, and the glass of the rear window seemed to shiver for an instant before exploding. Simon kept his foot pressed to the floor, holding the car on course as if such interventions were merely to be expected.
    A pair of heavy wrought-iron gates hung at the arched entrance. Two guards were valiantly trying to pull them together, and they were already partly closed when the Saint reached them. He snaked between them, scraping one as he heeled over in a two-wheeled skid onto the road outside.
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    One hand searched the switches on the dashboard until he found the one which controlled the siren, and its insistent two-toned hooting split the air. The whole operation, from the time he had charged for the window to the moment he hit the road, had taken less than a minute but already another police car was swinging out of the station less than a hundred yards behind, and in the rear-view mirror he saw it overtaken by a powerful motorcycle that slipped through the traffic on the wrong side of the road.
    Simon switched on the radio and listened to the unemotional voice of the central despatcher relaying the news of his escape and ordering road blocks to be set up on the major routes out of town. But the Saint had already decided that his best chance lay in drawing the chase through the narrow back streets until he could shake it off.
    The traffic ahead stopped or swung to the side as soon as the drivers caught sight of the flashing lights or heard the blaring sirens, and the Saint zigzagged through them.
    He threw the car around another corner of the maze, heading roughly towards the sea. His siren claiming priority over any law of the road, he threatened coronaries to oncoming drivers and forced those on his own side into the kerb.
    A lorry attempted to dispute his right of way at a crossing and he skimmed the Citroen under its nose with inches to spare. The driver swung frantically away from the maniac who seemed to be doomed to extinction under his wheels and crashed into another van parked on the corner. As he made the next turn, Simon saw that the log jam he had left behind would effectively halt the police posse for several minutes, except perhaps for the motorcycle cop.
    Now to make his passage less conspicuous, he switched off the siren as he came to the food market. A man pushed a barrow out from between two parked trucks and there was neither time nor room to avoid him.
    The car ploughed into the side of the cart, tossing it into the air. Simon saw the bonnet buckle on impact and heard the crash of glass and rending metal. He swerved the car steeply to one side, just grazing a lamppost, and for twenty yards actually drove along the sidewalk before regaining the road. The front wheels should have been ripped from the axle, the twisted metal should have pushed the radiator and fan back into the engine block, the steering should have been shot to hell, but somehow the car kept on going.
    The Saint looked in the mirror again and thought he saw the motorcycle far behind, momentarily blocked by the new obstacle, but unlike a car, it would not be detained for long.
    As he came to a wider road nearer the Boulevard Jean Hibert, his eyes were searching for a possible hiding place. The entrance to the underground garage of a new apartment building caught them, and he wrenched the wheel to catapult the car into the opening. The move was so fast that he could dare to hope that he had finally eluded his pursuers, as he threw the car down the ramp into the dimly lit basement below.
    He berthed the battered car in the handiest vacant space, and carefully started back towards the entrance on foot, edging his way between the rows of parked vehicles.
    He had almost reached the ramp when the roar of a motorbike told him that his optimism had been premature and sent him ducking behind the nearest car.
    he rider zoomed around the crypt and braked as soon as he saw the prowl