The Saint Meets His Match (18 page)

S
IMON
had slipped out his cigarette case and absently
selected a
cigarette. He lighted the cigarette, looking at a
picture on the opposite wall without seeing it; and his faintly
thoughtful smile lingered on the corners of his mouth, rather recklessly and
dangerously. But that was
like Simon Templar, who never got worked up
about
anything.

“Of course,” he said quietly,
“I’ve been rather liable to
overlook
that.”

“Why not?” she
answered, in a tone that matched his
own for evenness. “You can’t spend
twenty-four hours a
day thinking and talking
about nothing but that.”

He shifted his gaze to her face. Her beauty was
utterly
calm and tranquil. She showed
nothing—not in the tremor of a lip, or the flicker of an eyelid. And unless
something
were done there and then, she might have less than two
months of life ahead of her before a paid menial of
the
law hanged her by the neck… .

Teal’s whistle, in the
street below, shrieked again like
a lost soul.

And Jill Trelawney
laughed. Not hysterically, not even
in bravado. She just laughed. Softly.

She turned back the coat
of her
plain tweed costume,
and he saw a little
holster on the broad belt she wore.

“But I’ve never
overlooked it,” she said—“not entirely.”

Simon came round the
table, and his fingers closed on
her wrist in a circle of
cool steel.

“Not that way,” he said.

She met his eyes.

“It’s the only way
for me,” she said. “I’ve never had a
fancy
for the Old Bailey—and the crowds—and the black
cap.
And the three weeks’ waiting, in Holloway, with the chaplain coming in like a
funeral every day. And the last
breakfast—at such an
unearthly hour of the morning!”
The glimmer in her
eyes was one of pure amusement.
“No one could
possibly make a good dying speech at 8
a.m.,”
she said.

“You’re talking nonsense,” said the
Saint roughly.

“I’m not,” she
said. “And you know it. If the worst
comes
to the worst——
”

“It hasn’t come to
that yet.”

“Not yet.”

“And it won’t,
lass—not while I’m around.”

She laughed again.

“Simon—really—you’re
a darling!”

“But have you only
just discovered that?” said the Saint.

He made her smile. Even
if her laughter had been of
neither hysteria nor
bravado, it had not been a thing to
reassure him. A
smile was different. And he still found it
easy
to make her smile.
  

But she was of such a very
unusual mettle that he could
have no peace of mind with her at such a
moment. They
were very recent partners, and
still she was almost a
stranger to
him. They were familiar friends of a couple
of days’ standing; and he hardly knew her. In the days of their old
enmity he had recognized in her a fearless inde
pendence that no man could have lightly undertaken to
control—unless he had been insanely vain. And with
that
fearless independence went an unconscious
aloofness. She would follow her own counsel, and never realize that any
one else might consider he had a right to know
what that
counsel was. That aloofness was utterly unaware—he
divined that it had never been in her at all
before the
days of the Angels of
Doom, and when, the work of the
Angels
of Doom was done it would be. gone.

And Teal’s whistle was
silent. Simon looked down from
a window, and saw that
Teal had gone. But a uniformed
man stood at the foot of
the steps on the pavement out
side, and looked up from
time to time.

“Well?” said the girl.

“He’s gone for his
warrant,” said the Saint. “Cast your
bread
upon the waters, and you shall find it after many
days.
We can thank your Angels of Doom for that. If you
hadn’t
made the police so unpopular, Teal would have
risked the search
without a warrant. As it is, we’ve got a few minutes’ grace, which may run into
two hours. Par
don me.”

He went through into the bedroom and selected a
coat
from his wardrobe. He returned with
this, and a pillow
from the bed.

“Keep over on that
side of the room.”

She obeyed, perplexedly.
He pushed an armchair over against the window, put the pillow inside the coat
he had
brought, and sat coat and pillow in the chair.

“Now—where’s your
hat?”

He found the hat, and propped it up over the
coat on a
walking stick. Then he carried
over a small table and set
it beside the chair; and on the table he put
a small lamp.
After a calculating survey, he
switched on the small lamp.

“Now turn out that
switch beside you.”

She did as she was told;
and the only light left in the
room came from the small lamp on the table by
the armchair against the window.

“The Shadow on the
Blind,” said the Saint. “A Mystery
in
Three Acts. Act One.”

She looked at him.

“And Act Two—the
fire escape?”

He shook his head.

“No. We haven’t got one of those. Why not
the front
door? Are you ready?”

He handed her her bag,
went out into the hall, and
fetched in her valise. This he opened for her.

“Put on another
hat,” he said. “You must look or
dinary.”

She nodded. In a couple of
minutes she was ready; and
they walked down the stairs together. At the
foot of the
stairs he stopped.

“Round there,”
he said, pointing, “you’ll find a flight of steps to the basement. Wait
just out of sight. When
you hear me go up the
stairs again, walk straight out of the front door and take a taxi to the Ritz.
Stay there as
Mrs. Joseph M. Halliday, of Boston. Mr.
Joseph M. Halli
day—myself—will arrive for breakfast at ten o’clock to
morrow morning.”

“And Act Three?”
she asked.
         

“That,” said the
Saint serenely, “will be nothing but a brief brisk dialogue between Teal
and me. Good-night,
Jill.”

He held out his hand. She
took it.

“Simon, you’re not
only a darling—you’re a bright boy.”

“Just what Teal
said,” murmured the Saint. “Sleep
well,
Jill—and don’t worry.”

He left her there, and
went and opened the front door.

The constable outside
turned round alertly.

“Officer!” said
the Saint anxiously.

He looked amazingly
respectable; and the policeman
relaxed.

“Yes, sir?”

“There seems to be
something funny going on in the
fiat below me——”

The constable came up the
steps.

“Which floor are you
on, sir?”

“Second.”

The eyes of the law studied
the Saint’s nervous respect
ability with an intent
stare; and then the finger of the
law beckoned.

Simon followed the law
outside; and the finger of the
law pointed upwards. In
the first-floor window, a sil
houette could be seen on a
blind.

“In that flat below
you, sir,” said the law impressively,
“there’s
a woman ooze wanted for murder.”

Simon peered upwards.

“Why don’t you arrest
her?” he asked.

“Inspector’s gone for
a warrant,” said the constable.
“I’m keeping
watch till he gets back. Now, what was it you
heard
in that flat, sir?”

“A sort of moaning
noise,” said the Saint sepulchrally.

“It’s been going on
for some time. Sounds as if someone
was dying. I got
anxious after a bit, and went down and
rang
the bell, but I couldn’t get any answer.”

“Listen,” said
the policeman.

They listened.

“Can’t hear
anything,” said the policeman.

“You wouldn’t, down
here, with the window shut,” said
the Saint. “It’s
not very loud. But you can hear it quite
clearly
on the landing outside the flat.”

“She’s still sitting there, in that
window,” said the
policeman.

They stared upwards, side
by side.

“Sits very still,
doesn’t she?” said the Saint vaguely.

They stared longer.

“Funny,” said
the policeman, “now you come to men
tion
it, she does sit still, Ain’t never moved ‘arf an inch,
all this
time we’ve been watching her.”

“I don’t like the look
of it, officer,” said the Saint
nervously. “If
you’d heard that noise——
”

“Can’t ‘ear no noise
now.”

“I tell you, it gave
me the creeps… . Did this woman
know you were going to arrest her?”

“Oh, I think she
knows all right.”

“Supposing she’s
committing suicide——
”

The constable continued to strain his neck.

“Sounds as if I ought
to look into it,” he said. “But I
don’t
care to leave my post. The inspector said I wasn’t to
move
on any account. But if she’s trying to escape
justice——
”

“She still hasn’t moved,” Simon said.

“No, she ain’t
moved.”

“I don’t see how
going inside would be leaving your
post,” said
the Saint thoughtfully. “You’d be just as much
use
as a guard outside the door of the flat as you are here.”

“That’s true,”
said the policeman.

He looked at the Saint.

“Come on up with me,” he said.

“L-1-l-like a
shot,” said the Saint timidly, and followed in the burly wake of the law.

They listened outside the
door of the flat for some time,
and, not unnaturally, heard
nothing.

“Perhaps she’s dead
by now,” Simon ventured morbidly.

The law applied a stubby forefinger to the
bell. A minute passed.

The law repeated the
summons—without result.

The Saint cleared his
throat.

“Couldn’t we break
in?” he said.

The law shook its head.

“Better wait till
the inspector gets back. He won’t be long.”

“Come up and wait in my flat.”

“Couldn’t do that, sir. I’ve got to keep
an eye on this
door.”

Simon nodded.

“Well, I’ll be
off,” he sighed. “I’ll be upstairs if you
want
me.”

“If anything’s
happened, I expect the inspector will
want to see you,
sir. May I have your name?”

“Essenden,”
said Simon Templar glibly. “Marmaduke
Essenden. Your
inspector will know the name.”

He saw the name written
down in the official notebook,
and went up the stairs. On the landing above,
he waited
until he heard the constable
tramping downwards, and
then he
descended again and let himself into his own flat.

He was reading, in his
pajamas and a dressing gown,
when his bell rang again an hour and a half
later; and he
opened the door at once.

Teal was outside; and behind Teal was the
constable.
Seeing Simon, the constable
goggled.

“That’s the man,
sir,” he blurted.

“I knew that, you fool,” snarled
Teal, “as soon as you
told me the name
he gave you.”

He pushed through into the
sitting room. His round
red face was redder than
ever; and for once his jaws
seemed to be unoccupied
with the product of the Wrigley
Corporation.

The constable followed;
and Simon humbly followed
the constable.

“Now look at that!”
said Teal sourly.