The Saint Meets His Match (8 page)

Chapter III

HOW
 
SIMON
 
TEMPLAR
 
MADE
  
A
 
SLIGHT
ERROR,

AND PINKY BUDD MADE A BIG ONE

Two days later, Simon
Templar went unostentatiously
to a certain public house
in Aldgate. He was not noticed,
for he had made some subtle
alterations to his appearance and bearing. One man, however, recognized him,
and they moved over to a quiet corner of the bar.

“Have they been in
touch with you again?” was the Saint’s immediate question.

Mr. Dyson nodded.

His right eye was still disfigured by a swollen
black-and-
blue bruise. Mr. Dyson, thinking
it over subsequently,
had decided
that ten pounds was an inadequate compen
sation for the injury, but it was too late to reopen that
discussion.
     

“They sent for me
yesterday,” he said. “I went at once,
and
they gave me a very good welcome.”

“Did you drink
it?” asked the Saint interestedly.

“They’ve definitely
taken me on.”

“And the news?”

“It was like this
…”

Simon listened to a long
recital which told him nothing
at all of any value, and
departed a pound poorer than
he had been when he came. It was the highest
value he
could place upon Mr. Dyson’s first
budget of information, and Slinky’s aggrieved pleading made no impression upon
the Saint at all.”

He got back to the Yard to
hear some real news.

“Your Angels have
been out again while you weren’t
watching them,” said
Cullis, as soon as the Saint had an
swered his
summons. “Essenden was beaten up last night.”

“Badly?”

“Not very. The
servants were still about, and Essen
den was able to let
off a yell which fetched them around in a bunch. The man got away. It seems
that Essenden
found him in his bedroom when he went upstairs about
eleven o’clock. He tried to tackle the man, and got
the
worst of the fight. The burglar
was using a cosh.”

“And who did the good
work?”

“Probably your friend
Slinky. I’ve put a warrant out
for him, anyway.”

“Then take it
back,” said the Saint. “Slinky never
used
a cosh in his life. Besides, I happen to know that he
didn’t
do it.”

“I suppose he told you
so?”

“He didn’t—that’s
why I believe him. Have you had the
report from Records
on the general features of the show?”

“I’ve given them the
details. The report should be
through any minute
now.”

The report, as a matter of fact, was brought up
a few
minutes later. The Saint ran through
the list of names
submitted as possible authors of the crime, and
selected
one without much hesitation.

“Harry Donnell’s the
man.”

“At Essenden’s?” interjected Cullis
skeptically, “Harry
Donnell works the
Midlands. Besides, his gang don’t go
in
for ordinary burglary.”

“Who said it was an
ordinary burglary?” asked the Saint. “I tell you Harry Donnell’s the
man on that list
who’d be most pleased to take on an
easy job of bashing
like that. I could probably tell your
Records Office a few
things they didn’t know
about Harry—you seem to forget
that I used to know
everything there was to know about
the various birds
in his line of business. I’m going to pull
him
in. Before I go I’m going to tell Jill Trelawney that
I’m going to do it.
I’ll go round and see her now. She’ll
probably
try to fix me for some sticky end this time. But
that’s a minor detail.
Having failed in that she’ll try to get
on
the phone to Donnell and warn him—I expect he went
back to Birmingham this morning. You’ll arrange
for the
exchange operator to tell her that the line to Birmingham
is out of order. Then, if I know anything about
Jill Tre
lawney, she’ll set out to try to beat me to Birmingham
Herself. She’s got to keep up her reputation for
rescues, especially when the man to be rescued is wanted for doing
a job for her… .”

He outlined his plan in
more detail.

It was one which had come into
his head on the spur
of the moment, but the more
he examined it the better
it seemed to be. There was no evidence against
Jill Tre
lawney on any of the scores which
were at present held against her, and the Saint would have been bored stiff to
spend his time sifting over ancient history in the
hope
of building up a live case out
of dead material. Besides—
which was
far more important—that procedure wouldn’t
have fitted in at all with the real ambition that the story
of the
Angels of Doom had brought into his young life. And to set Jill Trelawney
racing into Birmingham to the
rescue of
Harry Donnell struck him as being a much
more entertaining way of spending the day.

In spite of the two
attempts which had already been
made on his life, he bore
the girl no malice. Far from it.
The Saint was used to that
kind of thing. In fact, he had
already found more
amusement in the pursuit of Jill
Trelawney than he had anticipated when he first
set forth to make her acquaintance, and he was now preparing to
find some more—but this, however, he did not
confide to
the commissioner.

They talked for a while
longer, and the Saint left cer
tain definite instructions
to be passed on to the appro
priate quarter. And then, as the Saint rose to
go, the com
missioner was moved to revert
to a thought suggested by
the
original subject of the interview.

“Isn’t it
curious,” said the commissioner, “that only the
other night
you should have been asking whether there
might
be a reason for the Angels to have a feud with
Essenden?”

“Isn’t it a scream?” agreed the
Saint.

He set off for Belgrave
Street in one of his moods of Saintly optimism.

It struck him that he was spending a great deal
of his
time in Belgrave Street. This would
be his third visit
that week.

He had no illusions about
the possible outcome of it— the gun with which he had provided himself before
leav
ing testified to that. A man cannot make himself as
consistently
unpopular as, for his own inscrutable
reasons,
it had in this case pleased the Saint
to make himself,
without there growing up, sooner or later, a state of tension
in which something has to break. The thing broken
should, of course, have been Simon
Templar, but up to
that time the
thing broken had somehow failed to, be Simon Templar. But this time
…

In the three days since
his last visit life had been allowed
to deal peacefully with him. He had
used the milk from outside his front door with a sublime confidence in its
purity, and had not been disappointed. He had walked
in and out of the house without any fear of being again enfiladed by
machine-gun fire; and in that again his judg
ment had proved to be right. On the other hand, he had
treated letters and parcels delivered to him, and
taxis
which offered themselves for
his hire, with considerable
suspicion.
He had as yet found no justification for this
carefulness, but he realized that the calm could only be
the herald of a storm. Possibly this third visit
to Belgrave
Street would precipitate
the storm. He was prepared for
it to
do so.

He was kept waiting
outside for some time before his
summons was answered. He
did not stand at the top of the stairs, however, while he was waiting, in a
position where
sudden death might reach him through
the letter box,
but placed himself on the pavement
behind the shelter
of one of the pillars of the portico.
From behind this, with one eye looking round it, he was able to see the slight
movement of a curtain in a ground-floor window as some
one looked out to discover who the visitor was. Simon
allowed his face to be seen, and then withdrew into cover
until the door opened. Then he entered quickly.

“Miss Trelawney is
expecting you,” said Wells as he
closed the door.

The Saint glanced
searchingly round the hall and up
the stairs as far as he could see. There
was no one else
about.

He smiled seraphically.

“You’re getting quite
truthful in your old age, Freddie,” he remarked, and went up the stairs.

The girl met him on the
landing.

“I got your message
to say you were coming.”

“I hope it gave you a
thrill,” said the Saint earnestly.

He looked past her into the
sitting room.

“Are you staying to
tea again?” she asked sweetly.

“Before I’ve
finished,” said Simon, “I expect you’ll be
wanting
me to stay the week.”

“Come in.”

“Thanks. I will.
Aren’t we getting polite?”

He went through.

In the sitting room he
found Weald and Budd, as he
had expected to find them,
though they had not been
exposed to the field of
view which he had from the land
ing through the open door.

“Hullo, Weald! And are
you looking for Waldstein,
too?”

Weald’s sallow face went a
shade paler, but he did not
answer at once. The Saint’s
mocking gaze shifted to Budd.

“Been doing any more
fighting lately, Pinky? I heard
that some tough guy beat
up a couple of little boys in
Shoreditch the other night,
and I thought of you at once.”

Pinky’s fists clenched.

“If you’re looking for
trouble, Templar,” he said
pinkly, “I’m waiting
for you, see?”

“I know that,”
said the Saint offensively. “I could hear
you
breathing as I came up the stairs.”

He heard the door close
behind him, and turned to face
the girl again.

It was a careless move, but
he had not been expecting
the hostilities to be
reopened quite so quickly. The fact
that the mere
presence of his own charming personality
might
be considered by anyone else as a hostile movement
in
itself had escaped him. In these circumstances there is,
by convention, a certain amount of warbling and woofling
before any active unpleasantness is displayed. Simon
Templar had always found this so—it took a certain
amount of time for his enemies to get over the confident effrontery of
his own bearing, and, in these days, their
ingrained
respect for the law which he was temporarily
representing—before
they nerved themselves to action.
But this was not
his first visit to Belgrave Street, nor their
first
sight of him, and they might have been expected to
show
enough intelligence to fortify themselves against his
coming
beforehand. Simon, however, had not expected it.
It
was the first slip he had made with the Angels of Doom.

He felt the sharp pressure
in his back, and knew what
it was without having to
turn and look. Even then he did
not turn.

Without batting an eyelid
he said what he had come to
say, exactly as if he had
noticed nothing amiss whatever.

“I’ve still some more
news to give you, Jill.”

There was a certain
mockery in the eyes that returned
his gaze.

“Do you still want to
give it?”

“Why, yes,” said
the Saint innocently. “Why not?”

Weald spoke behind him.

“We’re listening,
Templar. Don’t move too suddenly,
because I might
think you were going to put up a fight.”

The Saint turned slowly and
glanced down at the gun in Weald’s hand.