Another three miles nearer Treuchtlingen, when he decided that they were temporarily safe from any immediate pursuit, he braked the lorry again beside a small spinney and hopped out. The road was clear; and he threw back the tarpaulins and lifted Patricia down to the grass verge. Nina Walden followed her unconcernedly, and the Saint reclaimed his booty and dumped it into Patricia's hands.
"You two are going to be a couple of Wandervögel with great open faces," he said. "Take this stuff into the jungle and get on with it. The things you're wearing will go in the rucksacks. And don't carry on as if you were dressing to go to a dance—we can't stay here more than a week."
His lady stared suspiciously at the collection of garments which he had thrust upon her.
"But where did you get these things from?" she demanded; and Simon propelled her towards the coppice with a laugh.
"Now don't waste time asking indiscreet questions. I found them lying in a field, and the actress never told the bishop a smoother one than that."
He paced up and down beside the lorry, smoking a cigarette, while he waited for the girls to return. An open touring car jolted past with its springs labouring under the avoirdupois of a healthy Prussian commercial traveller and his Frau, but beyond that the prospect had no reason to complain that only man was vile. It was an almost miraculous stroke of fortune for the Saint, and he rendered thanks accordingly. The accident which had enabled him to misdirect the pursuit had been a bonanza in itself: it meant that the plight of the truck's crew might not be discovered for several hours, and meantime the hue and cry would be spreading away at right angles to the course he was taking. The last place in which any policeman would expect to see him was Treuchtlingen—the very town from which the alarm had emanated. The hunt would be deploying westward to intercept him at the French frontier, but Simon Templar was not going that way.
His cigarette had still half an inch to go when Patricia Holm emerged from the spinney and presented herself for his inspection.
"If we've got the rest of a week to spare," she said blandly, "I think I might have a smoke too."
Simon offered his packet. She had put on a brief leather skirt and a plain cotton jumper, and her legs were bare to the rawhide sandals. Her nose was definitely shiny, and the fair hair was pushed carelessly back from her forehead as if the wind had been rumpling it all day. She had even remembered to take off her gold wrist watch; and the Saint noted that touch with a slow smile of appreciation.
"There isn't much more I can teach you, old Pat," he said.
Nina Walden joined them a few moments later, and her garb was much the same. Simon showed her how to adjust the rucksack; and then he took her in his arms and kissed her heartily. For at least three seconds she was too thunderstruck to move, and then her voice returned.
"Are you getting fresh?" she demanded huskily; and Simon Templar laughed.
"I was just taking off some of your lipstick, darling. It's not being worn on great open faces these days, and it seemed a shame to mess up your hankie."
He whirled expeditiously up to the cockpit and sat on the edge of it to give his orders, leaning over with one forearm on his knee and his eyes dancing.
"You two'll have to make it on foot from here—it's under seven kilometres by the milestones, and you couldn't have a better day for a walk. Besides which, this lorry alibi mayn't last forever, and we don't all need to ride in one basket with the eggs. Go into Treuchtlingen and look for the station. Pat goes into the nearest Konditorei and buys herself a cup of chocolate to pass the time; Nina, you shunt into the Bahnhof and take a return ticket to Ansbach. Slide through the door marked Damen and make yourself at home. Change back into your ordinary clothes, wrap the other things into a parcel with some brown paper which you'll get on the way, wait till you hear the next train through, cross the line, and walk out the other side as if you owned the railroad—giving up the return half of your ticket. All clear so far?"
"I think so," said the American girl slowly. "But what's it all for?"
"I've got a job for you," said the Saint steadily. "You wanted the complete story of those crown jewels, and this is part of it. Your next move is the police station. You're a perfectly honest American journalist on vacation who's got wind of the attempted mail robbery and general commotion. We must know definitely what's happened to Marcovitch and his troupe of performing gorillas, and there's only one way to find out. Someone's got to jazz into the lion's den—and ask."
Simon looked down at her quietly; but the hell-for-leather twinkle was still dancing way down in his eyes. Sitting up there beside him, Monty Hayward began to understand the spell which the Saint must have woven around those cynical young freebooters of death who had followed him in the old days— the days which Monty Hayward knew only from hearsay and almost legendary record. He began to understand the fanatical loyalty which must have welded that little band together when they flung their quixotic defiance in the teeth of Law and Underworld alike, when every man's hand was against them and only the inspired devilry of their leader stood between them and the wrath of a drab civilization. And it came to Monty Hayward, that phlegmatic and unimpressionable man, in a sudden absurd flash of blind surrender, that if ever that little band should be gathered once more in the sound of the trumpet he would ask for no prouder fate than to be among their company. ...
"I'm not asking you to do anything disreputable," said the Saint. "As a reporter, it's your job to get all the news; and if you happen to share some of it with a friend—well, who's going to lose their sleep?"
"I should worry. But when do I get the rest of the story?"
"When we've got it ourselves. I've promised you shall have it, and I shan't forget. But this has got to come first I told you I'd help you as much as you helped me. I wouldn't give you the run-around for worlds—I couldn't afford to. We need that piece of news. It's the one thing that'll lead us to the only climax that's any use to anyone. If we lose Marcovitch, I lose my crown jewels—and your story's up the pole. You're the only one who can save the game. You're a journalist—will you go on and journalize?"
The others went still and silent in a heart-stopping moment of revelation. The preposterous surmise that had been tapping at the doors of their belief ever since the Saint began speaking burst in on them as an eternal fact. And with it came a realization of all that hung from the Saint's madness and that crazy instant of inspiration back in the woods by the railroad.
The Saint had never been thinking of defeat. With the hunt hard behind him and a price on his head, when he should have been thinking of nothing but escape, he had still been able to play with a madcap idea that fortune had thrown into his path. There was something about it which stunned all logic and all questions—a sense of the joyously inevitable which swept every sane criticism aside. It stirred something in the heart which was beyond reach of reason, like the cheering of a thousand throats or the swing of a regiment moving as one man—something that was rooted in the core of all human impulse, a primeval passion of victory that lifted the head higher and sent the blood tingling through the veins. . . . And the Saint was almost laughing.
"Will you try it?" he asked.
And Nina Walden said, with her marvellous amethyst eyes full upon his: "I can do that for you—Saint."
The Saint reached down and put out a brown hand.
"Good girl. . . . And when you've got the dope, all you have to do is rustle back to the Konditorei where you left Pat. Monty and I will park the lorry and be around. We'll find you somewhere. And it'll be a swell story." He smiled. "And thanks, Nina," he said.