Quintana went over backwards, smashingly, his legs flying in the air, taking the whole chair with him. The Saint's own momentum carried him halfway across the desk; he wriggled over, pushed his feet off onto the ground and dived for the communicating door.
Urivetzky clawed at him as he went by, and Simon whipped round, sent him reeling with a right to the jaw and was on his way with hardly a pause. An instant later, with the door slammed again behind him, he was scooting across the reception room to let himself out through the tall windows onto the terrace. A faint muffled shout, scarcely audible in the deep interior of the house, was the only sound that followed him.
Outside the sombre peace of Cambridge Square was as untroubled as it had always been, but Simon knew that it would not remain untroubled for long. He ignored the tree by which he had climbed up, placed one hand on the balustrade and vaulted out into space. He dropped twenty feet, landed with feet braced and knees bent to absorb the shock, straightened lithely up and dashed for the wall. Again he went over it with the swift sureness of a cat, and by the good grace of Providence the street on the other side was deserted. Simon turned to the left, instead of to the right where Peter Quentin was waiting further off with the car, in order to avoid passing the front of the house; and before the first sounds of the hue and cry arose behind him he was strolling sedately round the next corner like any righteous citizen on his way home.
He walked around two blocks so as to approach the car from behind, and as he re-entered Cambridge Square from the southeast corner he kept the car between him and the front of the house until the last moment when he stepped round it to open the door and get in.
"I was just getting ready to go home," Peter said as he steered the limousine out from the curb. "A couple of cars drove up a few minutes ago with what looked like policemen in them, so I thought they'd look after you."
"Maybe they were looking for a burglar," said the Saint and passed his bundle of currency over Peter's shoulder. "Take care of this for me, will you? There's forty thousand quid there, so don't lose it. You'd better park it somewhere as soon as you can — I'd better not keep it myself tonight, because Claud Eustace will probably be looking for it."
The limousine swerved in a slightly hysterical arc as Peter felt the bundle and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Did they give you this to get rid of you?" he asked feebly.
"More or less." The Saint was slipping into his sober black overcoat and taking his patriarchal white whiskers out of the locker. "Now step on the gas and let's get home. And before you even start ladling me out of here tell Sam Outrell to phone his father and rush him over to Cornwall House by the service entrance while Orace and I get rid of those phony phone repairers — because I have a hunch there's going to be some argument about Joshua Pond!"