The Saint Meets His Match (4 page)

“How are the Angels
this afternoon?” he inquired.

“They are”—she
waved a vague hand—“here and
there.”

“Nice for them. May I
sit down?”

“I think——
”

“Thanks.” He sat
down. “But don’t let me stop you thinking.”

She took a cigarette from the box beside her
and fitted
it into a long amber holder.
Weald applied a match.

“You forgot to ask me
if I minded,” said the Saint
reproachfully.
“Where are your manners, Jill?”

She turned in her chair—a movement far more
abrupt
than she meant it to be.

“If the police have to
pester me,” she said, “I should have appreciated their consideration
if they’d sent a
gentleman to do it.”

“Sorry,” said
Simon. “Our gentlemen are all out pester
ing
ladies. The chief thought I’d be good enough for
you.
Backchat. However, I’ll pass on your complaint
when
I get back.”

“If
you get back.”

“This afternoon,”
said the Saint. “And I shan’t worry
if
he takes me off the job. Man-size criminals are my
mark,
and footling around with silly little girls like you is just squandering my
unique qualities as a detective.
More backchat.”

Weald butted in, from the
other side of the room:

“Jill, why do you waste time——”

“It amuses
her,” said the Saint. “When she’s finished
amusing
herself, she’ll tell us why my time’s being wasted
here
at all. I didn’t fall through a trapdoor in the hall, I
wasn’t
electrocuted when I touched the banister rail, no
mechanical gadget shot out of the wall and hit me over
the head
when I trod on the thirteenth stair. I wasn’t shot by a spring gun on the way
up. Where’s your ingenuity?”

“Saint——
”

“Of course, your
father was English. Did you get your
accent from him or from the
talkies?”

He was enjoying himself.
She was forced to the exasper
ating realization that he
was playing with her, as if he
were making a game of the
encounter for his own secret
satisfaction. At the
least sign of resentment she gave, he
registered the scoring of a point to
himself as unmistak
ably as if he had
chalked it up on a board.

“By the way,”
Simon said, “you really must stop an
noying
Essenden. He came in to see us the other day, and
he was most upset.
Remember that his nerves aren’t as
strong as
mine. If you murdered him, for instance, I
couldn’t promise you that he wouldn’t be really seriously
annoyed.”

“Whether I’m
responsible for any shocks that Essen
den’s had, or
not,” said the girl calmly, “is still waiting to
be proved.”

“I don’t expect it will wait very
long,” said the Saint
comfortably.
“You amateur crooks are never very clever.”

Jill Trelawney took from
her bag a tiny mirror and
a gold-cased lipstick. She
attended to the shaping of her
mouth unconcernedly.

“Templar, you gave me
your word of honour you
would come alone to-day.”

“Fancy that! And did you believe it?”

“I was prepared
to.”

“Child,” said
the Saint, “you amaze me.”

He stood up and walked to
the window in long jerky
strides.

From there he beckoned
her, looking down to the street
from behind the curtains.

“Come here.”

She came, after a pause,
with a bored languidness; but
it was impossible to make
him show the least impatience.

“See there!”

He pointed down with a
challenging forefinger.

“See and hear that
man singing ‘Rose in the Bud’ at
the harmonium? He’s just
waiting for me to come out
and tell him he can go
home. And you see the man farther
up with the
ice-cream cart? He’s standing by. And the
man
selling newspapers on this side? More of the posse.
You credited me with
the darn thing, so I thought I’d live
up to
it. There’s ten of ‘em spread around this block
now!”

“I’m sorry. I thought
even your word of honour might
be worth something. But
now——
”

“You’ll know better
next time, won’t you?” Little flinty
jags
of amusement twinkled in his eyes. “What was the
joke
I was supposed to buy? Pinky Budd waiting down
stairs
in the hall with a handful of Angels? Or just a
button
you press up here that starts off the trapdoor and
the
electric banister rail and the mechanical gadget in
the
thirteenth stair?”

She faced him, flaming now without the
slightest at
tempt at concealment, suddenly
transformed into a beau
tiful tigress.

“You think you’re
clever—Saint!”

“I’m darn sure of
it,” murmured the Saint, modestly.

“You think——
”

“Often and
brilliantly. I kicked up the rug before I
stepped
on it, and saw the edge of the trap. I’m always
suspicious
of iron banister rails on indoor staircases. And
the thirteenth stair
gave an inch under my weight, so I
ducked.
But nothing happened. Rather lucky for you
the things weren’t working—in
the circumstances—isn’t
it?”

It was bewildering to think that the girl,
according to official records, was only twenty-two. Simon Templar
treated her like a petulant child because it
pleased him to
do so. But in that moment he recognized her anger as a
grown reality with nothing childish in it. That he
chose
to keep the recognition to
himself was nobody’s business.

“No one will stop you
going back to your posse, Temp
lar.”

“I didn’t think
anyone would.”

He glanced at his watch.

“They’ll be expecting
me in another five minutes. I
only came because I didn’t
want to disappoint you—and
because I thought you
might have something interesting
to say.”

“I’ve nothing more to—
say.”

“But lots of things to
do?”

“Possibly.”

That extraordinarily
mocking smile bared his teeth.

“If only,” he
murmured softly—“if only your father
could hear those sweet
words fall from your gentle lips!”

“You’ll leave my father out of it——”

“You’d like me to, wouldn’t you? But that
won’t make
me do it.”

There was a renewed
hardness in her eyes that had no
right to be there.

“My father was
framed,” she said in a low voice.

“There was a proper
inquiry. An assistant commission
er of police isn’t
dismissed in disgrace for nothing. And
is that an excuse for
anything
you
do, anyway?”

“It satisfies
me.”

Her voice held a depth of passion that for a
moment
turned even Simon Templar into a
sober listener. She had never flinched from his sardonically bantering stare,
and now she met it more defiantly than ever. She went on, in
that low,
passionate voice: “The shock killed him. You
know it could have been nothing else but that. And he
died denying the charge——
”

“So you think you’ve
a right to take vengeance on
the department for
him?”

“They condemned him
for a thing he’d never done.
And the mud sticks to me as well, still, a year
after his
death. So I’ll give them something
to condemn me for.”

The Saint looked at her.

“And what about that
boy over in the States?” he
asked quietly, and saw her
start.

“What do you know
about him?” she asked.

The Saint shrugged.

“It’s surprising
what a lot of odd things I know,” he
answered.
“I think we may talk some more on that sub
ject
one day—Jill. Some day when you’ve forgotten this nonsense, and the Angels of
Doom have grown their tails.”

For a span of silence he
held her eyes steadily—the
big golden eyes which, he
knew by his own instinct, were
made for such gentle
things as the softness into which he
had betrayed them for a moment. And then
that instant’s
light died out of them
again, and the tawny hardness re
turned. She laughed a little.

“I’ll go back when
the slate’s clean,” she said; and so the
Saint
slipped lightly back into the role he had chosen to
play.

“You missed your
vocation,” he said sweetly. “You
ought
to have been writing detective stories. Vengeance
—and
the Angels of Doom! Joke!”

He swung round in his
smooth sweeping way and
picked his hat out of the
chair. Weald seemed about to
say something, and, meeting the Saint’s
suddenly direct
and interrogative gaze,
refrained. Simon looked at the girl again.

“I’m leaving,”
he said. “We shall meet again. Quite
soon.
I promised to get you in three weeks, and two and
a
half days of it have gone. But I’ll do it, don’t you worry!”

“I’m not worrying,
Templar. And next time you give me your word of honour——
”

“Be suspicious of
everything I say,” Simon advised.
“I
have moments of extreme cunning, as you’ll get to
know.
Good-afternoon, sweetheart.”

He went put, leaving the
door open, and walked down
the stairs. He saw Pinky
Budd standing in the hall with
six men drawn up
impassively behind him; but it would
have taken more than that, at any time,
to make Simon
Templar’s steps falter.

The girl spoke from the
top of the stairs.

“Mr. Templar is
leaving, Pinky. His men are waiting
for him
outside.”

“Now that,” said
the Saint, “is tough luck on you— isn’t it, Pinky?”

He walked straight for the
door, and the guard stood
aside without a word to give him gangway. Only
Budd
stood his ground, and Simon halted in
front of him.

“Getting in my way,
Pinky?”

Budd looked at him with
narrowed, glittering eyes.
They were of a height as
they stood, but Budd would
have been a couple of
inches taller if he had straightened
his huge hunched shoulders. His long
arms hung loosely
at his sides, and the
ham-like fists at the end of them
were
clenched.

“Nope, I’m not getting
in your way. But I’ll come ‘n’
find you again soon,
Templar. See?”

“Do.”

The Saint’s hand came flat
in the middle of Budd’s
chest and overbalanced him
out of the road. And Simon
Templar went through to the
door.

A few strides up the street he stopped and laid
half a
crown on a harmonium.
    

“Do you know a song
called ‘A Farewell’?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said
the serenader.

“Play it for
me,” said the Saint. “And miss out the mid
dle
verse.”

He went on towards
Buckingham Palace Road as soon
as he had heard the introductory bars moaned
out on the
machine; and his departure was
watched by vengeful eyes
from the drawing-room window.

“You let him get
clean away,” snivelled Weald. “We
had
him——
”

“Don’t be an imbecile!”
snapped the girl. “He only
came to see if he could
tempt us into doing anything
foolish. And if we had, he’d have been tickled
to death.
And I just asked him to come so I
could get to know a
little more about
him, for future reference. He’s——
”

“What’s that bull with
the organ singing?”

They listened. The words
of the unmelodious perform
ance came clearly to their
ears. The troubadour, startled
by the magnitude of the
Saint’s largesse, was putting his
heart into the job.