Saint's Getaway by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

petered out, and they were jolting over a kind of glorified mule track which boxed the compass
along the brink of a contorted
precipice. The chauffeur, whose nervous system must have been nothing more than an elementary ap paratus rigged up from a few assorted icicles and
bits of string, kept his foot hard
down on the accelerator and took the hair pin corners on two wheels; and after the first mile of it the Saint buried his face in his sleeve and lost
interest in the route. Every few
minutes he felt the car heel drunkenly over to one side or the other, while the tires skidded horribly
over the loose, treacherous surface;
and the Saint felt the flesh crawling on
the back of his neck and wondered if any art of surgery would ever induce his bones to settle back into
their tortured sockets.
    Eventually, with a terrific bump which the
Saint at first as sumed to be the inevitable end, the car crabbed onto a com paratively level driveway and
began to slow down.
    Simon raised his head with the feelings of a
drowning man who finds himself unexpectedly coming up for the fourth
time, and endeavoured to absorb the salient features of the land scape.
    Straight in front of him he could see a
pitch-black pile rear ing up its serrated battlements out of the
shrouded dark. The headlamps of the car splashed a wide oval of light over
the bleak stone entrance flanked by semicircular bastions, and picked
out the gaunt figure of the janitor, who was at that mo ment
hurrying to open the huge wrought-iron gates. To left and right of the archway the forbidding
walls of the castle stretched sheer and unbroken to the squat round towers at
the corners fifty yards away.
    The car moved slowly forward again, and the Saint pulled himself cautiously up onto his toes and
fingertips. The gatekeeper was temporarily blinded by the headlights; and
Simon knew that that was his only chance. Once the car had passed within
the walls, the odds on his being spotted would leap up to twenty-five to one; and having travelled so far, he had no urge to gamble his hopes of success on any bet
like that.
    The gateway was the vulnerable point in the
fortifications, with a bare yard of masonry rising over it. As the car
passed underneath, Simon set his teeth, gathered his cracking muscles, and
jumped. He caught the top of the stonework, and wriggled over with
an effort that seemed to split his sinews.
    He found himself on a sort of narrow balcony
that spanned the
archway and disappeared into the turrets on each side. In the courtyard below
him he could see the car swinging round to
pull up beside a massive door over which a hanging lantern swayed in the
slight breeze. The car stopped, and the prince stepped quickly out; as he did so, the door was flung open, and a broad
beam of light cast the grotesquely elongated shadow of a footman down
the steps. The prince stepped inside, pulling off
his gloves; and the door dosed.
    Simon’s eye roved thoughtfully up the walls
above the door. Higher up he could see a narrow streak of light sneaking through a
gap in the curtains of a window: while he watched, the window next to it
suddenly appeared in a yellow square of radiance.
    “Which seems to be our next stop,”
opined the Saint.
    He moved along to the turret on his left, and found a flight of spiral stone stairs running upwards and
downwards from the minute landing
where he stood. After a second’s cogitation, he decided on the upward
flight, and emerged onto a broader promenade
which ran round the entire perimeter of the walls.
    Simon kissed his hand to the unknown
architect of that invaluable veranda, and hustled round it as quickly as he
dared. A matter of three minutes brought him to a point which he judged to
be vertically over the lighted windows; leaning dizzily over the
battlements, he was able to make out a dimly illuminated sill. And
right under his hands he could feel the thick, gnarled
tendrils of a growth of ivy that must have been digging itself in since the days