The Saint Meets His Match (9 page)

“Oh, that! Wonderful
how science helps you boys all
along the line. And a
silencer, too. Do you know, I always
thought those
things were only used in stories written for
little
boys?”

“It’s good enough for
me.”

“I couldn’t think of anything that
wouldn’t be too good for you,” said the Saint. “Except, perhaps, a
really mutinous sewer.” Then he turned round again. “Do you know
a man named Donnell, Jill?”

“Very well.”

“Then you’d better go
ring him up and tell him goodbye. He’s going to Dartmoor for a long holiday,
and he
mightn’t remember you when he comes out.”

She laughed.

“The police in
Birmingham have been saying things
like that about Harry Donnell for the
last two years, and
they’ve never taken
him.”

“Possibly,” said
the Saint in his modest way. “But this
time the police of
Birmingham aren’t concerned.”

“Then who’s going to
take him?”

Simon smoothed his hair.

“I am.”

Pinky Budd chuckled throatily.

“Not ‘arf, you
ain’t!”

“Not ‘arf, I
ain’t,” agreed the Saint courteously.

“May I ask,”
said the girl, “how you think you’re going
to
Birmingham?”

“By train.”

“After you leave
here?”

“After I leave
here.”

“D’you think you’re leaving?”
interjected Weald.

“I’m sure of
it,” said the Saint calmly. “Slinky Dyson will let me out. He’s an
old friend of mine.”

The girl opened the door. Dyson was outside.

“Here’s your friend the Saint,” she
said.

“Hullo,
Slinky,” said the Saint. “How’s the eye?”

Dyson slouched into the
room.

“Search him,”
ordered Weald.

Dyson obeyed, doing the job
with ungentle hands. Simon made no resistance. In the circumstances that
would only have been a mediocre way of committing
suicide.

“How true you run to
type, Jill!” he murmured. “This
is
just what I was expecting. And now, of course, you’ll
tell
me that I’m going to be kept here as your prisoner until you choose to let me
go. Or are you going to lock
me in the cellar and leave
the hose running? That was
tried once. Or perhaps
you’re going to ask me to join your
gang. That’d be
quite original.”

“Sit down,”
snapped Weald.

Simon sat down as if he had
been meaning to do so all
the time.

Jill Trelawney was at the
telephone. The Saint ob
served her out of the corner
of his eye while he selected
and lighted a cigarette
from his case. He waited quite
patiently while she tried
to make the call, but he feigned
surprise when she failed.

“That really upsets
me,” he said. “Now you’ll have to
go
to Birmingham yourself. I hate to think I’m putting
you
to so much inconvenience.”

He saw Budd busying
himself with some loose rope, and when the ex-prize fighter came over with the
obvi
ous intention of binding him, the Saint put his hands
behind him without being told to. Weald was talking to
the girl.——

“Do you really mean
to go to Birmingham?”

“Yes. It’s the only
thing to do. I can’t get in touch with
Donnell
by telephone, and it wouldn’t be safe to send a
wire.”

“And suppose it’s a
trap?”

“You can suppose it’s
what you like. The Saint’s clever.
But I think I’ve
got the hang of him now. It’s just a repeti
tion
of that posse joke. He’s come to tell us that he’s
going
to get Donnell just because he thinks we won’t
believe
it. And if he does get Donnell, Donnell will
squeal.
If you’ve got cold feet you can stay here. But I’m
going. Budd can go with
me if you don’t like it. He’ll be
more use
than you, anyway.”

“I’ll go with
you.”

“Have it your own
way.”

She came back to watch
Budd putting the finishing
touches to the Saint’s roping.

“You’ll be pleased
to hear,” she said, “that for once I’m
going to believe
you.”

“So I heard,” said the Saint.
“Hope you have a nice
journey. Will you
leave Dyson to look after me? I’m sure
he’d
treat me very kindly.”

She shook her head.

“Budd,” she
said, “will be even kinder.”

It was a blow at the very
foundations of the scheme
which the Saint had built
up, but not a muscle of his face
betrayed his feelings.

He spoke to her as if
there were no one else in the room,
holding her eyes in
spite of herself with that mocking
stare of his.

“Jill
Trelawney,” he said, “you’re a fool. If there were
degrees in pure, undiluted imbecility I should give you
first prize. You’re going to Birmingham with Weald.
When you get
there you’re going to walk into a pile of
trouble.
Weald will be as much use to you as a tin tomb
stone. Not that the thought worries me, but I’m just tell
ing you
now, and I’d like you to remember it afterwards.
Before to-night you’re going to wish you’d been born
with some sort of imitation of a brain. That’s all.
I shall
see you again in
Birmingham—don’t worry.”

She smiled, with a lift of her eyebrows.

“Aren’t you thoughtful
for me, Simon Templar?”

“We don’t mind doing
these things for old customers,” said the Saint benignly.

He was still looking at her. The bantering gaze
of his
blue eyes from under the lazily
drooping eyelids, the faint
smile, the
hint of a lilt of laughter in his voice—these
things could rarely have been more airily perfect in their
mockery.

“And while you’re on
your way,” said the Saint, “you
might
have time to remember that I never asked you to
become a customer.
You’re making the most blind par
alytic fool
of yourself that ever a woman made of anything
that God had given her such a long start on! But that’s
your own idea, isn’t it? Now go ahead and prove
it’s right.
Go to Birmingham, take
that diseased blot of a Stephen
Weald
with you——
”

Weald stepped forward.

“What did you say,
Templar?”

“I said ‘diseased blot
of a Stephen Weald,’ ” said the
Saint pleasantly. “Any
objection?”

“I have,” said
Weald. “This——
”

He struck the Saint three times in the face
with his fist.

“… and this–for
the first time I met you.”

Simon sat like a rock.

“You’ve found some
courage since then,” he remarked,
in
a voice of steel and granite. “Been taking pink pills
or something?”

Then the girl stepped
between them.

“That’ll do,”
she said curtly. “Weald, go and get your coat. Pinky, you and Dyson can
carry Templar down
stairs.”

“So it’s to be the
cellar and the hose pipe, is it?” drawled
the
Saint, unimpressed.
           

“Just the cellar, for
the present,” she answered coolly.
“I’ll
decide what else is to be done with you when I come
back.”
 

“
If
. If you
come back,” said the Saint indulgently.
 

2

Simon lay in the cellar
where he had been carelessly
dropped, and meditated his
position by the light of the
single dusty globe which
provided the sole illumination in
the place. Having dropped him there,
Budd and Dyson
departed, but the hope that
they might have gone for
good, thereby
leaving him to try all the tricks of escape
he knew upon the ropes with which he had been tied, was
soon
dispelled. They returned in a few moments, Budd
carrying a table and Dyson a couple of chairs. Then they
closed the door and sat down.

Clearly, the watch was
intended to be a close one. Budd
took a pack of greasy
cards from his pocket, and the two
men settled down
to a game.

Cautiously, as well as he could without
attracting at
tention, the Saint tested his
bonds. The process did not
take him
long. His expert tests soon proved that the rop
ing had been done by a practised hand. It remained,
therefore, to depend on the loyalty of Slinky
Dyson. And
how much was that worth?
In an interval in the game he
caught Dyson’s eye. Slinky’s expression
did not change,
but Simon found something
reassuring in that unpromis
ing
fact.

For a quarter of an hour the game continued,
and then
Slinky wiped his mouth with a soiled
handkerchief.

“This is a thirsty
job,” he complained.

“Ain’t it?” agreed
Budd. “Would you like a drink?”

“Not ‘arf. Is there
anything?”

Budd nodded.

“I’ll see if I can
find something. You keep your eyes
skinned for Templar,
see?”

“You bet I
will.”

Budd rose and went out,
leaving the door open, and
Simon listened without speaking
as the sound of the man’s
heavy footsteps faded up the stairs.

A moment later he found
Dyson beside him.

“I don’t want to
hustle you,” said the Saint easily, “but
if you’ve nothing else
to do at the moment——”

Dyson swallowed.

“If Budd comes back
and catches me at this I’m a
goner,” he said.

He had opened a
murderous-looking jackknife, and Simon felt the ropes loosen about his arms and
legs as
Dyson slashed clumsily at them. Then, beyond the
sound
of Dyson’s laboured breathing, he heard Budd coming
back. Slinky gave a little grunt of panic.

“You’ll see I’m all
right, Mr. Templar, won’t you?”

“Sure,” said the
Saint.

He stood up and swiftly
untwisted the loose cords that
held him and dropped them
on the floor.

Pinky Budd saw him standing
up free beside the table, and very carefully he
put down the tray he was
carrying.

“So that’s the
idea!” breathed Budd.

“It is,” said the Saint gently.
“And now we’re going to
have a fight,
aren’t we?”

Dyson was still holding the
murderous jackknife, but the Saint pushed him smoothly aside.

“You can put that
away,” he said. “This is a vegetarian party. Fairly vegetarian,
anyway. I’m going to give Pinky
beans, and— Oh, don’t go
yet, Pinky!”

Budd had made a dive for
the door. The key was still in
the lock, and if he had
brought off the manoeuvre he
might have been able to
get outside and lock the door
behind him. But the Saint was a shade quicker.
The table
was between him and Budd, but he
hurled it aside as if
it had been made
of cardboard, and caught Budd’s hand as it went to the lock.

Budd dropped the key with
a scream of pain. He tried
to kick, but Simon dodged
neatly.

Then he pushed Budd away
so that the man went reel
ing across the room, and the Saint picked up
the key and
put it in his trouser pocket.
Then he slipped off his coat.

“And now, Pinky Budd,
we have this fight, don’t we?”

But Budd was coming on
without any encouragement.
He was on his toes, too. The fighting game had
not dealt
lightly with Pinky’s face, but he
had all the science and experience that he had won at the cost of his disfigure
ments.

He led off with a
sledge-hammer left that would have
ended the fight then and there if it had
connected. But it
did not connect. Simon ducked
and landed a left-right beat to the body that made Budd grunt. Then the Saint
was away again, sparring, and he also was on his
toes.