The Saint Meets His Match (10 page)

Moreover, he was between
Budd and the door, and he meant to stay there. Budd had asked for the fight,
and he
was going to get it. Budd might have been glad of the
chance, or he might have wanted to get out of it, but he
wasn’t having the choice, anyway. Simon Templar was
seeing to
that. But to a certain extent that tactical neces
sity of keeping between Budd and the door was going to
cramp his style. He appreciated the disadvantage in
a
fight which wasn’t going to be an
easy fight at any moment. But it couldn’t be helped.

Budd’s next lead was
another left, but it was a feint.
The Saint divined that and changed his
guard. But he was
a little slow in divining
that the right cross which came
over
after the left was a second feint, and the half-arm
jolt to the short ribs which followed it caught
him unpre
pared drove him back gasping against the wall.

Budd came in like a tiger, left and right, and
Simon
dropped to one knee.

He straightened up with a
raking uppercut that must
have ricked Budd’s neck as
though a horse had kicked
him under the chin. That
blow would have been the end
of the average man for
some time to come. But Budd had
been trained in a tougher
school. He fell into a clinch that
the Saint, still rib-bound from the
smashing blow he had
taken, was not quick
enough to avoid. There Budd’s
weight
told. There was no referee to give them the break
away, and the professional was free to use every
dirty trick
of holding and heading and
heeling for which a clinch
gives
openings. But the Saint also knew a few of those
himself, and he broke
the clinch eventually with a blow
that would
certainly have got him disqualified in any
official contest. As he stepped out he swung up a pendulum left which
should have caught Budd under the jaw.
Pinky
got his head back quickly enough, but not quite
far enough, and the blow snicked up his nose.

It maddened him, but it
also blinded him. No man,
however tough, can have
his nose snicked up in that par
ticular way without having
his vision momentarily
fogged. And before Budd
could see what was happening
the Saint had sent in a
pile-driving right-hander to the
heart. Then he turned on
his toes and followed through
with a left to the solar
plexus that had every ounce of his
weight behind it,
and Budd went smashing down as if a
steam hammer had hit
him.

Simon picked up his coat.

“We ought to be just
in time to get that train, Slinky,”
he
remarked, and then he turned round to find that
Slinky
Dyson had already gone.

With a shrug the Saint went out, locking the
door be
hind him.

A taxi took him to Paddington, and he arrived
outside
the platform barrier just as the
guard was blowing his
whistle.

He had no ticket, but such
minor difficulties were never
allowed to stand in Simon Templar’s way. Nor
was the
ticket collector. Simon picked him.
up and sat him on a
convenient luggage trolley, and raced down the platform
as the train was gathering way. He opened
the door of the first convenient carriage and swung into it. Looking back
through the window, he saw the chase of porters
tailing off
breathlessly. They might telephone to Birmingham and prepare
a reception for him there, but that would not take long to deal with.

Then he turned to inspect
the other occupants of the
carriage, whose
flabbergasted comments had been audible
behind
him as he looked back out of the window; but
the first person he
noticed was not a man in the carriage.
It
was a man who happened to be passing down the
corridor.

The Saint strode over a
barricade of legs, odd luggage,
and a bird cage, and went down the corridor in
the man’s
wake. Coming up sufficiently close
behind him, he trod
heavily on the
man’s heels; and Stephen Weald turned
with an oath.
          

“What the——
”

The exclamation died
suddenly, and Weald’s face went grey as he recognized the offender.

Simon’s lips twitched
into a little smile of sprightly
merriment.

“So we’re all going to
Birmingham together!”

Then, with a surprising
abruptness, he turned away
into the nearest carriage, where he had already
perceived
a vacant seat, and composed
himself to the enjoyment of
a
cigarette.

Weald passed on.
  

A little farther down the corridor was the
compartment in which he and the girl had found places. She looked up
as he showed in the doorway, and he gave her an
imper
ceptible signal. She came out to join him in the corridor.

“What is it?”

“Let’s go to the
dining car,” said Weald. “We shan’t be
overheard
there.”

He led the way, and no
more was said until they were
securely ensconced and tea
had been ordered.

“Well, what is it,
Weald?”

“The Saint’s on the
train! I’ve just seen him.”

She stopped in the act of
fitting a cigarette into a
holder.

“The Saint? You’re
dreaming.”

He shook his head. The
hand with which he offered her
a match was shaking.

“I tell you I saw
him. He spoke to me. He’s in a com
partment three
divisions back from ours. I don’t know
how he got away, but
he’s done it.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s that man
Dyson. Heavens, Templar’s clever! You were listening when he warned me about
Dyson, weren’t
you? And we took it just the way the
Saint meant us to
take it. Dyson’s done the
double-cross.”

“And Pinky——
?”

“Pinky’s a back
number.”

The girl admitted the fact
grimly. She was calm about
it.

“Why do you think the
Saint is in this, Jill?”

“Who knows why the
Saint does anything? You’ve read
the stories in the
newspapers—he was pardoned, and now
he seems to be
working right in with the police.
…
But
you’re right. This isn’t
like any ordinary racket of the
Saint’s.”

“What are we going to
do?” asked Weald tremblingly.

“I’ll tell you in a
minute,” she said. “Keep quiet, and
don’t
bother me.”

She drew at her
cigarette, looking out of the window at
the
darkening scenery. It was some time before she looked
at Weald again.

Then she said:

“We go on, of
course!”

Weald’s mouth fell open.

“But Templar’s on the
train. I’m not being funny——
”

“Neither am I. The Saint’s expecting to
scare us off Donnell, but we aren’t going to be scared. If he’s on the
train, we haven’t a way out, anyway. The only
thing for us
to do is to go on. We
may be able to deal with him at
Donnell’s,
but we can’t here, that’s certain. The train’s
packed, and we’d never
get away with it.”

“He’ll have a posse
at Donnell’s.”

She laughed, a hard little
laugh.

“That posse’s another of the Saint’s
fairly tales. I don’t
believe a man like
that would dream of using one. He’s
got too darn good an opinion of
himself. Don’t you see
that it amuses him to
go about alone like this and get
away
with it? He gets twice as much kudos for the job as
he would if he went round with a bodyguard. But
this
time he isn’t going to get away
with it. That’s my answer.
If you know
anything better I’ll hear it.”

Weald said nothing. The
train ran on.

He avoided her eyes.
Picking up his cup to drink mechanically, he spilt tea over the tablecloth.
But that might
have been the jolting of the train. He
hoped she would
think it was. He knew she was
watching him.

What little colour there
could be in his face had not
come back since he saw
the Saint, for Stephen Weald had
seen the jaws of
destruction yawning at him at the same
time.
        

It had all happened so
quietly and gently up to that
point that he had never seen the danger until
it was upon
him. There had been nothing
concrete in the mere
knowledge that
the Saint was after the Angels of Doom,
imposing as the Saint’s reputation
was. And though each
of Simon Templar’s
visits to Belgrave Street had been
both
an insult and a threat, none of them had been suf
ficiently terrifying to rouse an alarm which could not be
dissipated with a drink after he had left. And now
it seemed as if all that had changed as suddenly as if a
charge of
dynamite had been detonated under the whole
situation.
And all through such a simple thing. Before
that there had been no evidence against any of them.
But now there was. Simon Templar had been held up
and
bound and locked in a cellar, and
now he was free to tell
the tale, with Dyson’s evidence to support it.

That might well be the
beginning of the end. Weald
had always had a
wholesome respect for the tenacity of the
police
when once they got hold of a solid bone to chew.
Throughout
his career he had made a point of keeping away from any material contact with
them. As long as
they were working in the dark against him he could feel
safe, but once they could make any definite accusation, and thus get a hold on
him, there was no knowing where
it might
end.

But in Jill Trelawney
there was no sign of weakening.

“We can still pull through,”
she said.

Weald’s thin fingers twitched his tie
nervously.

“How can you say that
after what we know now?”

“We’re not dead yet.
In your way, you’re right, of
course. We’ve tripped over
about the most ridiculous
little thing that we could
have tripped over, and if we
aren’t careful we’ll go stumbling over the edge
of the
precipice. But I’m not giving an
imitation of a jelly in an
earthquake.”

“Nor am I,” said Weald angrily.

The mocking contempt
remained in her eyes, and he
knew that he was not believed.

With a certain grim
concession to her sense of humour
she remembered the
Saint’s warning before they left
Belgrave Street. The Saint
had certainly been right. In
the circumstances, Weald
was likely to be very much less
use than a tin tombstone. She saw the way he
put a hand
to cover the twitching of his weak
mouth, and realized
that Stephen
Weald was going to pieces rapidly.

Chapter IV

HOW JILL TRELAWNEY TOLD A LIE, AND

SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE NOTHING BUT

THE TRUTH

H
ARRY
D
ONNELL
lived in a house in a
mean street on the
outskirts of Birmingham. It was a curious house, but as
soon as he had seen it he knew that few other
houses
could have fulfilled his
requirements so completely, for
he had always boasted that if necessary
he would resist
arrest to the death.

This house had grown up,
somehow, in the very inside
of a block. Being
completely surrounded by the other
houses of the
block necessarily deprived its rooms of most
of
the light of day, but Donnell could not see this as a
disadvantage.
The same fact made the house very difficult
to
attack, and this to his mind was compensation enough.
In fact, the building
could only be approached directly
through a
straight and narrow alleyway between two of
the outer houses.

He rarely stirred out of
doors except on business, pre
ferring to sleep and drink and smoke at home,
and amuse
himself with his own inscrutable
and animal meditations. He was at home when Jill Trelawney and Stephen Weald
arrived, and went down to open the door to them himself when he recognized the
signal on the bell which showed that the visitors were friendly.