[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

instantaneously he let in the clutch, and cut in to the line of traffic only
two cars behind her. Intent and expres-sionless as a stalking leopard, the
Saint drove on after her.
4
Her first stop was at the South Kensington post office. The Saint's eyes went
cold and brittle when he saw the Daimler slowing up: Exhibition Road was too
wide and unfrequented for any car to be unnoticeable in it. Fortu-nately on
that account he had let himself fall some distance behind her. He jammed on
the brakes and whipped round into Imperial Institute Road, and felt that the
gods had been kind to him when he saw that she crossed the sidewalk and
entered the post office without looking round. Clearly it had not occurred to
her that she could have been picked up by that time.
He made a U turn in the side road and parked near the corner. Then, after a
moment's hesitation, he got out and walked up towards the post-office
entrance. It was a fool-hardy thing to do, but a theory was already taking
solid form in his mind. He had used that trick himself. Mail any-thing you
want to hide, addressed to yourself at a poste restante in any name you can
think of: where could it be safer or harder to find?
She came out so quickly that he was almost caught. He turned in a flash and
stood with his back to her, taking out his cigarette case and deliberating
lengthily over his selection of a cigarette. Reflected in the polished inside
of the case, he saw her cross the pavement again, still without looking round,
and get back into the car.
But he had been wrong. As she came out she was putting an envelope into her
bag, but it was only a small one obviously too small and thin to contain such
a dossier as Kennet must have given her.
His brain leaped to encompass this reversal. Her cloak-room story must have
been true, then: she had simply given herself double cover, mailing the ticket
to herself at the poste restante. His imagination bridged the gaps like a bolt
of lightning. Without even turning his head to check his observations, without
letting himself indulge a further instant's vacillation, he started back
towards his own car.
And in the middle of the next stride he stopped again as if he had run into an
invisible wall.
Where he had left the Hirondel there was now another car drawn up alongside
it a lean, drab, unobtrusive car that hid its speedy lines under a veneer of
studiously sombre cellulose, a car which to the Saint's cognizant eye carried
Page 86
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the banners of the mobile police as plainly as the sails on a full-rigged
ship, even before he saw the blue-uniformed man at the wheel and the other
blue-uniformed man who had got out to examine the Hirondel at close quarters.
The dragnet was out, and this was the privileged one out of the hundreds of
patrol cars that must even then have been scouring the city for him that had
located its gaudy quarry. If he had waited in the car they would have caught
him.
But his guardian angel was still with him. They must have arrived only a
moment ago, and they were still too wrapped up in the discovery of the
Hirondel to have started looking round for the driver.
The Saint had spun round as soon as he saw them. He was between two fires now,
but Valerie Woodchester was the less formidable. He whipped out a handkerchief
and held it over the lower part of his face as he started up the road again.
The Daimler was pulling out from the curb, moving on towards Kensington
Gardens. On the opposite side of the road a taxi had pulled up to discharge
its freight. Simon walked over towards it with long space-devouring strides
that gave a deceptive impression of having no haste behind them. He climbed
into the offside door as the passenger paid his fare.
"Go up towards the Park," he said. "And step on it."
The taxi swung round in an obedient semicircle and rat-tled north. As it came
round the curve the Saint took a last look at the corner where he had so
nearly met disaster. The blue-uniformed man who had got out of the police car
was putting his hand on the Hirondel's radiator. He took it away quickly and
said something to his companion, and then they both started to look round; but
by that time their chance of immortal fame had slipped through their fingers.
The Saint buried himself in the corner of the seat, and his cab bowled away on
the second lap of the chase.
The policeman at the top of the road was stopping the north-and-south traffic,
and the taxi had caught up to within a few yards of the Daimler's petrol tank
when he lowered his arm. The driver slackened speed and half turned.
"Where to, sir?"
"Keep going." The Saint sat forward. "You see this Daimler just ahead of you?"
"Yessir."
"There's two quid for you on top of the fare if you can keep behind it."
You may have wondered what happens in real life when the pursuing sleuth leaps
into a cab and yells "Follow that car!" The answer is that the driver says
"Wot car?" After this has been made clear, if it can be made clear in time to
be of any use, he simply follows. He has nothing better to do, anyhow.
Whether he can follow adequately or not is another mat-ter. Simon suffered a
short interval of tenterhooked anxiety before he was assured that his guardian
angel, still zealously concentrating on its job, had sent him a taxi that was
capa-ble of keeping up with most ordinary cars in traffic and a driver with
enough cupidity to kick it along in a way that showed that he regarded a
two-pound tip as something to be seriously worked for. The whim of a traffic
light or a point-duty policeman might still defeat him, but nothing else
would.
Simon sat back and relaxed a little.
He had a brief breathing spell now in which to synopsize his thoughts on the
recent visit from Comrade Fairweather which had dragged on to such a
disastrous denouement. He was sure that the denouement had been no part of
Fairweather's design. Fairweather, caught unprepared by Teal's presence and
the things that had been going on when he arrived, had simply been improvising
from start to finish exactly as Simon's counterattack had been impro-vised.
What he had really meant to say when he came to Cornwall House had not even [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]