He turned to the others.
"I don't know how it strikes any of you bat-eyed brigands," he said, "but I've got a feeling that this is the best break we've had yet. After all, a lot of weird things happen in this world of sin, but you don't usually find girls in overalls riding on smugglers' trucks with a cargo of contraband stagger soup."
"You do when you hold 'em up," said Peter stoically.
"She didn't know I was going to hold it up, you fathead. So she's here for some other reason. Well, she might be just a girl friend of the Menace here, but I don't think it's likely. Take a look at her, and then look at him. Of course if she turned out to be blind and deaf and half-witted—"
The driver growled viciously, and received another painful prod from Hoppy Uniatz's gun for his trouble.
"Well, if she isn't?" said Peter.
"Then she's something a hell of a lot more important. She's one of nobs — or she knows 'em pretty well. It'd fit in, wouldn't it? Remember that last consignment we hijacked? All silk dresses and lace and crepe-de-Chine underwhatsits. I always thought there might be a woman in it; and if this is her—"
"She," said Peter helpfully.
The Saint laughed.
"The hell with your grammar," he said. "Let's get going — it'd spoil everything if somebody else came scooting over this blasted heath just now."
He turned away and picked the girl up in his arms like a baby — her body was still limp and lifeless, and it would save a certain amount of trouble if she remained in that state for a little while. So long as Hoppy hadn't struck hard enough for her to be unconscious too long…
He put her down in the car, in the seat beside his own, and closed the door. He had left the engine running in case of the need for a quick getaway, and he knew that in waiting so long he had already tempted the Providence that had sent him such a windfall. He straightened up briskly and strolled to meet the others who were following him.
"This means that we change our plans a bit," he said. "I like my beauty sleep as much as any of you, even if I don't need it so much; but I've got to know where this is getting us before we go to bed. You can follow along with the lorry to the Old Barn, Peter, and Hoppy can take it up to town from there while we see if the fairy princess knows any new fairy tales."
Mr Uniatz cleared his throat. It sounded like the waste pipe of a bath regurgitating, but it was meant to be a discreet and tactful noise. Almost the whole of the intervening conversation had been as obscure to him as a recitation from Euripides in the original Greek, but one minor omission stood out in front of him with pellucid clarity. Mr Uniatz was no genius, but he had an unswerving capacity for detail which many more brightly coruscating brains might have envied.
"Boss," he said, compressing philosophical volumes into their one irreducible nutshell, "dis mug."
"I know," said the Saint hurriedly. "I was exaggerating a bit, I'm afraid. It isn't as bad as all that, really. I don't believe anyone would actually die of heart failure if they saw it. I've looked at it myself several times—"
"I mean," said Mr Uniatz shyly, emphasizing his objective with another rib-splitting thrust of his Betsy, "dis mug here."
"Oh, him. Well—"
"Do I give him de woiks?" asked Mr Uniatz, condensing into six crystalline monosyllables the problem which dictators of every age and clime have taken thousands of words to propound.
Simon shrugged tolerantly.
"If he gets obstreperous I should say yes," he murmured. "But if he behaves himself you can put it off for a while. We will have words with him first. If he can put us wise about whether the sleeping beauty is one of the first strings in this racket—"
"Or even the first string," said Peter Quentin thoughtfully.
The Saint put his cigarette to his mouth and drew it to a bright spark of light. For a few moments he was silent. It was a thought that had already occurred to him, long before; but he had been content to let the answer produce itself in its own good time. Even stranger things than that had happened in the cockeyed world of which Simon Templar had made himself the uncrowned king, and when they did occur they were usually the forerunners of even more trouble than he had set out to ask for, which was plenty. But complications like that had to take care of themselves.
"Who knows?" said the Saint vaguely. "It might just as well have been the secretary of the Women's Temperance League, who isn't nearly so good looking. On your way, Peter—"
"Hey!" bawled Mr Uniatz.
His voice, which could never at any time have rivalled the musical accents of a radio announcer, blared into the middle of the Saint's words with a bloodcurdling intensity of feeling that made even Simon Templar's iron nerves wince. For a moment the Saint was paralyzed, while he searched for some sign of the stimulus that was capable of drawing such a response from Mr Uniatz's phlegmatic throat.
And then he became aware that Hoppy was staring straight ahead with a frozen rigidity that was not even conscious of the sensation it had caused. A little to the Saint's left the driver of the lorry was looking in the same direction with a glitter of evil satisfaction in his small eyes.
Simon swung round the other way and saw that Peter Quentin also was gazing past him with the same petrified immobility. And as the Saint turned round further he had a feeling of dizzy unreality that made his scalp creep.
As he remembered it he had only taken a couple of steps away from his car when Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz and the driver of the lorry had met him. But as he turned he couldn't see the car at all where it should have been. The road all around him looked empty in the dull gleam of their torches, apart from the black bulk of the van which overshadowed them. It was another second before he saw where his car was. It had swung off onto the heath in a wide arc in order to straighten up; and while he watched it, it bumped back onto the macadam and went skimming away up the road to the northeast with no more than a soft flutter of gas from the exhaust to announce its departure.
III
"One of the things I envy about you," said Peter Quentin with a certain relish, "is that magnetic power which makes you irresistible to women. Even if they've just been knocked unconscious the moment they open their eyes and see what's found them—"
"It's a handicap, really," said the Saint good-humouredly. "Their instinct tells them that if they saw much of me they'd do something their mothers wouldn't like, so as often as not they tear themselves reluctantly away."
"I noticed she looked reluctant," said Peter. "She took your car, too — that must have been a wrench."
The Saint grinned philosophically and tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail. His spirits were too elastic to know the meaning of depression, and the setback had intriguing angles to it which he was broad minded enough to appreciate as an artist.
The lorry, with Peter at the wheel, churned on through West Holme onto the Wareham road; and Simon Templar lounged back on the hard seat beside him with his feet propped up where the dashboard would have been if the lorry had boasted any such refinements and considered the situation without malice. In the interior of the van, behind him, Hoppy Uniatz was keeping the original driver under control; and Simon hoped that he wouldn't do too much damage to the cargo. But even allowing for Mr Uniatz's phenomenal capacity, there was enough bottled kale there to save the night's work from being a total loss.
They were clattering through the sleeping streets of Ringwood before Peter Quentin said: "What are you going to do about the car?"