"What have we won this time?" Peter asked interestedly.
The Saint's torch was sweeping over the rows of cases stacked up inside.
"Looks like a good night's work, soaks," he answered. "There's quite a load of Bisquit Dubouche, and a spot of Otard… a whole raft of Clicquof Veuve… Romanee-Conti… Chambertin… Here's a case of Chateau Yquem—"
"Is dey any scotch?" inquired Mr Uniatz practically.
"No, I don't think so… Oh yes, there are a few cases in the corner. We don't seem to have done too badly."
He switched off his flashlight and returned to spring lightly down to the road and shut the doors again. For a moment he stood gleefully rubbing his hands.
"Bisquit Dubouche," he said. "Clicquot Veuve. Chambertin. Romanee-Conti. Chateau Yquem. Even Hoppy's scotch. Think of it, my perishing pirates. Cases and cases of 'em. Hundreds of quids worth of bee-yutiful drinks. And not one blinkin' bottle of it has paid a penny of duty. Smuggled in under the noses of the blear-eyed coastguards and potbellied excise men. Yoicks! And all for our benefit. Do we smuggle? Do we defraud the revenue? No, no — a thousand times no. We just step in and grab the loot. Have a drink with me, you thugs."
"That's all very well," Peter Quentin objected seriously. "But we went into this hijacking game to try and find out who was the big bug who was running it—"
"And so we shall, Peter. So we shall. And we'll have a drink with him. And a cigar and a set of silk underwear, like we got last time. How are those lace panties wearing, Hoppy?"
Mr Uniatz made a plaintive noise in his throat, and the Saint pulled himself together.
"All right," he said. "Let's be on our way. Peter, you can carry on with the lorry. Park it in the usual place, and we'll be over in the morning and help you unload. Hoppy and I will take this team along and see if we can find out anything from them."
He turned away and led off along the roadside to move his car out of the way. In the blackness beside the truck he almost stumbled over something lying on the ground and recalled Hoppy's account of his interview with the driver's mate. As he recovered his balance he switched his torch on again and turned it downwards.
The sprawled figure in grimy overalls lay with its face turned upwards, quite motionless, the mouth slightly open. The upper part of the face was hard to distinguish under the brim of a tweed cap pulled well down over the eyes, but the chin was smooth and white. He could only have been a youngster, Simon realized, and felt a fleeting twinge of pity. He bent down and shook the lad's shoulder.
"How hard did you bop him, Hoppy?" he said thoughtfully.
"I just give him a little pat on de bean, boss—"
"The trouble is, everybody hasn't got a skull like yours," said the Saint.
He dropped on one knee and pulled down the zipper from the neck of the overalls, feeling inside the youngster's shirt for the reassurance of a heartbeat. And the others heard him let out a soft exclamation.
"What's the matter?" Peter Quentin demanded sharply.
"Well, we certainly won something," said, the Saint. "Look."
He took hold of the shabby tweed cap and jerked it off; and the ray of the torch in Peter's hand jumped wildly as a flood of golden hair broke loose to curl around the face of a girl whose sheer loveliness took his breath away.
II
Mr Uniatz sucked in his breath with a sound like an expiring soda siphon; and Peter Quentin sighed.
"Nunc dimittis," he said weakly. "I can't stand any more. The rest of my life would be an anticlimax. I always knew you were the luckiest man on earth, but there are limits. I believe if you trod on a toad it'd turn out to be a fairy princess."
"You ought to see what happens when I tread on a fairy," said the Saint.
Actually his thoughts were chasing far ahead of his words. The miracle had happened — if it was a miracle — and the story went on from there. He was too hardened a traveller in the strange country of adventure to be dumbfounded by any of the unpredictable twists in its trails. But he was wondering, with a tingle of inward exhilaration, where this particular twist was destined to lead.
He turned up the edge of his mask to light another cigarette, and his mind went back over the events that had brought him out that night, not for the first time, to make the raid that had culminated in this surprise… The laden trucks thundering northwards from the coast, filled to capacity with those easily marketable goods on which the English duties were highest — wines and spirits, cigars and cigarettes, silks and embroideries and Paris models… The rumours in the press, that leaked out in spite of the efforts of the police, of a supersmuggler whose cunning and audacity and efficient organization were cheating the revenue of thousands of pounds a week and driving baffled detectives to the verge of nervous breakdowns… The gossip in pubs along the coast and the whispers in certain exclusive circles to which no law-abiding citizen had access… The first realization that he had enough threads in his hands to be irrevocably committed to the adventure — that the grand old days of his outlawry had come back, as they must always go on coming back so long as he lived, when his name could be a holy terror to the police and the ungodly alike and golden galleons of boodle waited for his joyous buccaneering forays…
And now he was wondering whether he dared to hope that the clue he had been seeking for many weeks had fallen into his hands at last, in the shape of that slim golden beauty in the oil-stained overalls who lay unconscious under his hands.
He went on thinking without interrupting his examination. She was alive anyway — her pulse was quick but regular, and she was breathing evenly. There was no blood on her head, and her skull seemed to be intact.
"That cap probably helped," he said. "But it only shows you how careful you have to be when you're patting people on the bean, Hoppy."
Mr Uniatz swallowed.
"Chees, boss—"
"It's all right," Peter consoled him. "You wouldn't have missed anything if you had brained her. If there's going to be any more fun he'll have it."
The Saint straightened up and turned to the driver of the lorry, who was standing woodenly behind him with his ribs aching from the steady pressure of a Betsy which in spite of Mr Uniatz's chivalrous distress had never shifted its position.
"Who is she?" Simon asked.
The driver glowered at him sullenly.
"I don't know."
"What happened — did you find her growing on a tree?"
"I was just givin' 'er a lift."
"Where to?"
"That's none o' your muckin' business."
"Oh no?" The Saint's voice was amiable and unruffled. "Pretty lucky she was all dressed up ready to go riding in a lorry, wasn't it?"
The man tightened his jaw and stood silent, scowling at the Saint with grim intensity. He was, as a matter of fact, just starting to experience that incredulity of his own recollections of his recent flight through the air which has been referred to before; he was a big man, and he was thinking that he would like to see an attempt to repeat the performance.
The jar of Hoppy's gun grinding roughly into his side made him half turn with a darkening glare.
"Dijja hear de boss ask you a question?" enquired Mr Uniatz with all the dulcet persuasiveness of a foghorn.
"You ruddy barstard—"
"That '11 do," Simon intervened crisply. "And I wouldn't take any chances with my health if I were you, brother. That Betsy of Hoppy's would just about blow you in half, and he's rather sensitive about his family. We'll go on talking to you presently."