The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

by Leslie Charteris

  The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

  Leslie Charteris

  Meet Miss Murder

  The Saint stood there amazed. The two musclemen at her side didn't bother him at all, but her face and that softly rounded body stopped him cold. So this was Jill Trelawney, England's most notorious criminal!

  His own poker face showed nothing of the fear inside him. Not because of the risk of violence or brutality from the men but because of the woman.

  The results of this meeting lead to high adventure as the Saint joins forces with Europe's most dangerous and voluptuous criminal—in a plan that was to rock England to the inner circles of Scotland Yard!

  THE SAINT

  MEETS HIS MATCH

  (Original title, "Angels Of Doom")

  By Leslie Charteris

  COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED

  AVON PUBLISHING CO., INC.

  575 Madison Ave.—New York 22

  ANGELS OF DOOM

  Copyright, 1931, 1932, by Leslie Charteris

  Avon Edition

  First Printing December,1952

  TO

  HUGH CLEVELY

  Published by arrangement with Doubleday and Co., Inc.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Chapter I

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR MET JILL TRELAWNEY,

  AND THERE WERE SKYLARKING AND

  SONG IN BELGRAVE STREET

  THE big car had been sliding through the night like a great black slug with wide, flaming eyes that seared the road and carved a blazing tunnel of light through the darkness under the over-arching trees; and then the eyes were suddenly blinded, and the smooth pace of the slug grew slower and slower until it groped itself to a shadowy standstill under the hedge.

  The man who had watched its approach, sitting under a tree, with the glowing end of his cigarette carefully shielded in his cupped hands, stretched silently to his feet. The car had stopped only a few yards from him, as he had expected. He stooped and trod his cigarette into the grass and came down to the road without a sound. There was no sound at all except the murmur of leaves in the night air, for the subdued hiss of the car's eight cylinders had ceased.

  Momentarily, inside the car, a match flared up, reveal­ing everything there with a startling clearness.

  The rich crimson upholstery, the handful of perfect roses in the crystal bracket, the gleaming silver fittings— those might have been imagined from the exterior. So also, perhaps, might have been imagined the man with the battered face who wore a chauffeur's livery; or the rather vacantly good-looking man who sat alone in the back, with his light overcoat swept back from his spotless white shirt front, and his silk hat on the seat beside him. Or, perhaps, the girl. . . .

  Or perhaps not the girl.

  The light of the match focussed the attention upon her particularly, for she was using it to light a cigarette. On the face of it, of course, she was exactly what one would have looked for. On the face of it, she was the kind of girl who goes very well with an expensive car, and there was really no reason why she should not be sitting at the wheel. On the face of it ...

  But there was something about her that put superficial judgments uneasily in the wrong. Tall she must have been, guessed the man who watched her from the shad­ows, and of a willowy slenderness that still left her a woman. And beautiful she was beyond dispute, with a perfectly natural beauty which yet had in it nothing of the commonplace. Her face was all her own, as was the cornfield gold of her hair. And no artifice known to the deceptions of women could have given her those tawny golden eyes. . . .

  "So you're Jill Trelawney!" thought the man in the shadows.

  The light was extinguished as he thought it; but he carried every detail of the picture it had shown indelibly photographed on his brain. This was a living photograph. He had been given mere camera portraits of her before-some of them were in his pocket at that moment—but they were pale and insignificant things beside the memory of the reality, and he wondered dimly at the impertinence which presumed to try to capture such a face in dispas­sionate halftone.

  "On the face of it—hell!" thought the man in the shadows.

  But in the car, the man in evening dress said, more elegantly: "You're an extraordinary woman, Jill. Every time I see you—"

  "You get more maudlin," the girl took him up calmly. "This is work—not a mothers' meeting."

  The man in evening dress grunted querulously.

  "I don't see why you have to be so snappy, Jill. We're all in the same boat——"

  "I've yet to sail in a sauceboat, Weald."

  The end of her cigarette glowed more brightly as she inhaled, and darkened again in an uncontested silence. Then the man with the battered face said, diffidently: "As long as Templar isn't around­­——"

  "Templar!" The girl's voice cut in on the name like the crack of a whip. "Templar!" she said scathingly. "What are you trying to do, Pinky? Scare me? That man's a bee in your bonnet——"

  "The Saint," said the man with the battered face diffidently, "would be a bee in anybody's bonnet what was up against him. See?"

  If there had been a light, he would have been seen to be blushing. Mr. Budd always blushed when anyone spoke to him sharply. It was this weakness that had given him the nickname of "Pinky."

  "There's a story——" ventured the man in evening dress; but he got no further.

  "Isn't there always a story about any fancy dick?" de­manded the girl scornfully. "I suppose you've never heard a story about Henderson—or Peters—or Teal—or Bill Kennedy? Who is this man Templar, anyway?"

  "Ever seen a man pick up another man fifty pounds above his weight 'n' heave him over a six-foot wall like he was a sack of feathers?" asked Mr. Budd, in his diffident way. "Templar does that as a kind of warming-up exercise for a real fight. Ever seen a man stick a visiting card up edgeways 'n' cut it in half with a knife at fifteen paces? Templar does that standing on his head with his eyes shut. Ever seen a man take all the punishment six hoodlums can hand out to him 'n' come back smiling to qualify the whole half-dozen for an ambulance ride? Templar——"

  "Frightened of him, Pinky?" inquired the girl quietly.

  Mr. Budd sniffed.

  "I been sparring partner—which is the same as saying human punchbag—to some of the best heavyweights what ever stepped into a ring," he answered, "but I always been paid handsome for the hidings I've took. I don't expect the Saint 'ud be ready to pay so much for the pleasure of beating me up. See?"

  Mr. Budd did not add that since his sparring-partner days he had seen service in Chicago with "Blinder" Kellory and other gang leaders almost as notorious—men who shot on sight and asked questions at the inquest. He had acquitted himself with distinction in Kellory's "war" with "Scarface" Al Capone—and he said nothing about that, either. There was a peculiarly impressive quality about his reticence.

  "Nobody's gonna say I'm frightened to fight anybody," said Mr. Budd pinkly, "but that don't stop me knowing when I'm gonna be licked. See?"

  "If you take my advice, Jill," yapped the man in evening dress, "you'll settle with Templar before he gets the chance to do any mischief. It ought to be easy——"

  The man in the shadows shook with a chuckle of pure amusement. It was a warm evening, and all the windows of the car were open. He could hear every word that was said. He was standing so near the car that he could have taken a pace forward, reached out a hand, and touched it. But he took two paces forward.

  The girl said, with cool contempt, as though she were dealing with a sulky child: "If it'll make you feel any happier to have him fixed——"

  "It would," said Stephen Weald shamelessly. "I know there are al
ways stories, but the stories I've heard about the Saint don't make me happy. He's uncanny. They say——"

  The words were strangled in his throat in a kind of sob, so that the other two looked at him quickly, though they could not have made out his face in the gloom. But the girl saw, in an instant, what Weald had seen—the deeper shadow that had blacked out the grey square of one window.

  Then there was something else in the car, something living, besides themselves. It was strangely eerie, that transient certainty that something had moved in the car that belonged to none of them. But it was only an arm—a swift sure arm that reached through one open window with a crisp rustle of tweed sleeve which they all heard clearly in the silence—and a hand that found a switch and flooded them with light from the panel bulb over their heads.

  "What do they say, Weald?" drawled a voice.

  There was a curious tang about that voice. It struck all of them before they had blinked the darkness out of their eyes sufficiently to make out its owner, who now had his head and shoulders inside the car, leaning on his forearms in the window. It was the most cavalierly insolent voice any of them had ever heard.

  It sent Pinky Budd a dull pink, and Stephen Weald a clammy grey-white.

  Jill Trelawney's cheeks went hot with a rising flush of anger. Perhaps because of her greater sensitiveness, she appreciated the mocking arrogance of that voice more than either of the others. It carried every conceivable strength and concentration of insolence and impudence and biting challenge.

  "Well?"

  That gentle drawl again. It was amazing what that voice could do with one simple syllable. It jagged and rawed it with the touch of a high-speed saw, and drawled it out over a bed of hot Saharan sand in a hint of impish laughter.

  "Templar!"

  Budd dropped the name huskily, and Weald inhaled sibilantly through his teeth. The girl's lip curled.

  "You were talking about me," drawled the man in the window.

  It was a flat statement. He made it to the girl, ignoring the two men after one sweeping stare. For a fleeting sec­ond her voice failed her, and she was furious with herself. Then—

  "Mr. Templar, I presume?" she said calmly.

  The Saint bowed as profoundly as his position in the window admitted.

  "Correct." A flickering little smile cut across his mouth. "Jill Trelawney?"

  "Miss Trelawney."

  "Miss Trelawney, of course. For the present. You'll be plain Trelawney to the judge, and in jail you'll just have a number."

  It was extraordinary how a spark of hatred could be kindled and fanned to a flame in such an infinitesimal space of time. An instant before he had appeared in that window he had been nothing to her but a name—until then.

  And now she was looking at the man through a blaze of anger that had leapt up to white heat within her in a moment. Before that, she had been frankly bored with the fears of Weald and Budd. She had dismissed them, callously. "If it'll make you feel any happier to have him fixed——" It had been completely impersonal. But now . . .

  She knew what hate was. There were three men she hated, with everything she did and every breath she took. She would not have believed that there was room in her soul for more hatreds than that, and yet this new hatred seemed momentarily to overshadow all the others.

  She was looking fixedly at him, unaware of anything or anyone else, engraving every feature of his appearance on her memory in lines of fire. He must have been tall above the average, she judged from the way he had to stoop to get his head in at the window; and his shoulders fitted uneasily in the aperture, wide as it was. A tall, lean buccaneer of a man, dark of hair and eyebrow, bronzed of skin, with a face incredibly clean-cut and deep-set blue eyes. The way those eyes looked at her was an insult in itself.

  "I believe you were proposing to fix me," said the Saint. "Why not? I'm here, if you want me."

  He broke the silence without an effort—indeed, you might have said he did not know that there had been a silence.

  "If you want a fight," said Budd redly, "I'm here. See?"

  "Wait a minute!"

  The girl stopped Budd with a hand on his arm as he was fumbling with the door.

  "Mr. Templar has his posse within call," she said cynically. "Why ask for trouble?"

  The Saint's eyebrows twitched blandly.

  "I have no posse. I had a gang once, but it died. Didn't they tell you I was working alone?"

  "If they had," said the girl, "I shouldn't believe them. You don't look the kind of man who can bluff without a dozen armed men behind him."

  He trembled with a gust of noiseless mirth.

  "Quite right. I'm terrified, really!"

  The mocking eyes glanced again from Budd to Weald, and back again to the girl. That maddening smile flick­ered again on the clean-cut lips with a glitter of perfect teeth.

  "And are these two of the Lady's maids?"

  "Suppose they are?" rapped the girl.

  "What a dramatic ideal"

  She discovered that the eyes could hold something even more infuriating than insolence, and that was a con­descending amusement. A little while before she had been treating Stephen Weald like a fractious child: now she was receiving the same treatment herself.

  "I'm glad you like it," she said sweetly.

  "You're not," said the Saint cheerfully. "But let that pass. I came to give you a word of advice."

  "Thanks very much."

  "Not at all."

  He pointed with a long brown finger past the girl.

  "There's a house up there," he said. "Don't pretend you don't know, because I should hate you to have to tell any unnecessary lies. It belongs to Lord Essenden. My advice to you is—don't go there."

  "Really?"

  "They're holding a very good dance up at that house," said the Saint sardonically. "I should hate you to spoil it. All the wealth of the county is congregated together. If you could only have seen the jewels——"

  She had opened her bag, and there was a white slip of pasteboard in her hand. She held it up so that he could see.

  "I think this will admit me."

  "Let me see it."

  He had taken it from her fingers before she realized what he was doing. And yet he did not appear to have snatched it.

  "Quite a good forgery," he remarked—"if it is a forgery.

  But I could believe you capable of engineering a real invitation, Jill."

  "It's quite genuine. And I want it back—please!"

  Simon Templar looked down the muzzle of the auto­matic and seemed to see something humorous there.

  He looked perfectly steadily into her eyes, and with per­fect deliberation he tore the card into sixteen pieces and let them trickle through his fingers to the floor of the car.

  "Your nerves are good, Templar!" she said through her teeth.

  He appeared to consider the suggestion quite seriously.

  "They've never troubled me. But that didn't require nerves. Another time I shall be more careful. This time, you hadn't had long enough to muster up the resolution to shoot. It wants a good bit of resolution to kill your first man in cold blood. But when you've thought it over . . . Yes, I think I shall be careful next time."

  "You'd better!" snarled Weald shakily.

  The Saint noticed his existence.

  "You spoke?"

  "I said you'd better be careful—next time!"

  "Did you?" drawled the Saint.

  He disappeared from the window, but the illusion that he had gone was soon dispelled. The door opened, and Simon Templar stood with one foot on the running board.

  "Get out of that car!"

  "I'm damned if I will——"

  "You're damned, anyway. Come out!"

  He reached in, caught Weald by the collar, and jerked him out into the road with one swift heave.

  "Stephen Weald, dope trafficker, blackmailer, and con­fidence man—so much for you!"

  The Saint's hand shot out, fastened on one of the ends of Weald's i
mmaculate bow tie, pulled. . . . That would have been enough at any time, the simplest gesture of contemptuous challenge; but the Saint invested it with a superbly assured insolence that had to be seen to be be­lieved. For a moment Weald seemed stupefied. Then he lashed out, white-lipped, with both fists. . . .

  The Saint picked him out of the ditch and tumbled him back into the car.

  "Next?"

  "If you want a fight—" began Budd; and once again the girl stopped him.

  "You mustn't annoy Mr. Templar," she said withering­ly. "Mr. Templar's a very brave man—with his posse waiting for him up the road."

  The Saint raised his eyebrows.

  "Still that story?" he protested. "How can I convince you?"

  "Don't bother to try," she answered. "But if you'd like to come to 97, Belgrave Street, at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, we'll be there."

  "So shall I," said the Saint cheerfully. "And I give you my word of honour I shall come alone."

  He held her eyes for a moment, and then he was gone; but a few seconds later he was back again as the self-starter burred under her foot.

  "By the way," he said calmly, "I have to warn you that you'll receive a summons for standing here all this time with your lights out. Sorry, I'm sure."

  He stood by the side of the road and watched the lights of the car out of sight. Perhaps he was laughing. Perhaps he was not laughing. Certainly he was amused. For the Saint, in his day, had made many enemies and many friends; yet he could recall no enemy that he had made for whom he felt such an instinctive friendliness. That he had gone out of his way to make himself particularly un­pleasant to her was his very own business . . . his very own. Simon Templar had his own weird ideas of peaceful penetration.

  But the smile that came to his lips as he stood there alone and invisible would have surprised no one more than Jill Trelawney, if she could have seen it.