The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

by Leslie Charteris

  "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 reel­ing 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 disfigure­ments.

  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.

  Moreover, he was between Budd and the door, and he meant to stay there. Budd had asked for the fight, and he was going to get it. Budd might have been glad of the chance, or he might have wanted to get out of it, but he wasn't having the choice, anyway. Simon Templar was seeing to that. But to a certain extent that tactical necessity of keeping between Budd and the door was going to cramp his style. He appreciated the disadvantage in a fight which wasn't going to be an easy fight at any mo­ment. But it couldn't be helped.

  Budd's next lead was another left, but it was a feint. The Saint divined that and changed his guard. But he was a little slow in divining that the right cross which came over after the left was a second feint, and the half-arm jolt to the short ribs which followed it caught him unpre­pared drove him back gasping against the wall.

  Budd came in like a tiger, left and right, and Simon dropped to one knee.

  He straightened up with a raking uppercut that must have ricked Budd's neck as though a horse had kicked him under the chin. That blow would have been the end of the average man for some time to come. But Budd had been trained in a tougher school. He fell into a clinch that the Saint, still rib-bound from the smashing blow he had taken, was not quick enough to avoid. There Budd's weight told. There was no referee to give them the break­away, and the professional was free to use every dirty trick of holding and heading and heeling for which a clinch gives openings. But the Saint also knew a few of those himself, and he broke the clinch eventually with a blow that would certainly have got him disqualified in any official contest. As he stepped out he swung up a pendu­lum left which should have caught Budd under the jaw. Pinky got his head back quickly enough, but not quite far enough, and the blow snicked up his nose.

  It maddened him, but it also blinded him. No man, however tough, can have his nose snicked up in that particular way without having his vision momentarily fogged. And before Budd could see what was happening the Saint had sent in a pile-driving right-hander to the heart. Then he turned on his toes and followed through with a left to the solar plexus that had every ounce of his weight behind it, and Budd went smashing down as if a steam hammer had hit him.

  Simon picked up his coat.

  "We ought to be just in time to get that train, Slinky," he remarked, and then he turned round to find that Slinky Dyson had already gone.

  With a shrug the Saint went out, locking the door be­hind him.

  A taxi took him to Paddington, and he arrived outside the platform barrier just as the guard was blowing his whistle.

  He had no ticket, but such minor difficulties were never allowed to stand in Simon Templar's way. Nor was the ticket collector. Simon picked him. up and sat him on a convenient luggage trolley, and raced down the platform as the train was gathering way. He opened the door of the first convenient carriage and swung into it. Looking back through the window, he saw the chase of porters tailing off breathlessly. They might telephone to Birmingham and prepare a reception for him there, but that would not take long to deal with.

  Then he turned to inspect the other occupants of the carriage, whose flabbergasted comments had been audible behind him as he looked back out of the window; but the first person he noticed was not a man in the carriage. It was a man who happened to be passing down the corridor.

  The Saint strode over a barricade of legs, odd luggage, and a bird cage, and went down the corridor in the man's wake. Coming up sufficiently close behind him, he trod heavily on the man's heels; and Stephen Weald turned with an oath.

  "What the——"

  The exclamation died suddenly, and Weald's face went grey as he recognized the offender.

  Simon's lips twitched into a little smile of sprightly merriment.

  "So we're all going to Birmingham together!"

  Then, with a surprising abruptness, he turned away into the nearest carriage, where he had already perceived a vacant seat, and composed himself to the enjoyment of a cigarette.

  Weald passed on.

  A little farther down the corridor was the compartment in which he and the girl had found places. She looked up as he showed in the doorway, and he gave her an imperceptible signal. She came out to join him in the corridor.

  "What is it?"

  "Let's go to the dining car," said Weald. "We shan't be overheard there."

  He led the way, and no more was said until they were securely ensconced and tea had been ordered.

  "Well, what is it, Weald?"

  "The Saint's on the train! I've just seen him."

  She stopped in the act of fitting a cigarette into a holder.

  "The Saint? You're dreaming."

  He shook his head. The hand with which he offered her a match was shaking.

  "I tell you I saw him. He spoke to me. He's in a com­partment three divisions back from ours. I don't know how he got away, but he's done it."

  The girl's eyes narrowed.

  "It's that man Dyson. Heavens, Templar's clever! You were listening when he warned me about Dyson, weren't you? And we took it just the way the Saint meant us to take it. Dyson's done the double-cross."

  "And Pinky——?"

  "Pinky's a back number."

  The girl admitted the fact grimly. She was calm about it.

  "Why do you think the Saint is in this, Jill?"

  "Who knows why the Saint does anything? You've read the stories in the newspapers—he was pardoned, and now he seems to be working right in with the police. ... But you're right. This isn't like any ordinary racket of the Saint's."

  "What are we going to do?" asked Weald tremblingly.

  "I'll tell you in a minute," she said. "Keep quiet, and don't bother me."

  She drew at her cigarette, looking out of the window at the darkening scenery. It was some time before she looked at Weald again.

  Then she said:

  "We go on, of course!"

  Weald's mouth fell open.

  "But Templar's on the train. I'm not being funny——"

  "Neither am I. The Saint's expecting to scare us off Donnell, but we aren't going to be scared. If he's on the train, we haven't a way out, anyway. The only thing for us to do is to go on. We may be able to deal with him at Donnell's, but we can't here, that's certain. The train's packed, and we'd never get away with it."

  "He'll have a posse at Donnell's."

  She laughed, a hard little laugh.

  "That posse's another of the Saint's fairly tales. I don't believe a man like that would dream of using one. He's got too darn good an opinion of himself. Don
't you see that it amuses him to go about alone like this and get away with it? He gets twice as much kudos for the job as he would if he went round with a bodyguard. But this time he isn't going to get away with it. That's my answer. If you know anything better I'll hear it."

  Weald said nothing. The train ran on.

  He avoided her eyes. Picking up his cup to drink me­chanically, he spilt tea over the tablecloth. But that might have been the jolting of the train. He hoped she would think it was. He knew she was watching him.

  What little colour there could be in his face had not come back since he saw the Saint, for Stephen Weald had seen the jaws of destruction yawning at him at the same time.

  It had all happened so quietly and gently up to that point that he had never seen the danger until it was upon him. There had been nothing concrete in the mere knowledge that the Saint was after the Angels of Doom, imposing as the Saint's reputation was. And though each of Simon Templar's visits to Belgrave Street had been both an insult and a threat, none of them had been sufficiently terrifying to rouse an alarm which could not be dissipated with a drink after he had left. And now it seemed as if all that had changed as suddenly as if a charge of dynamite had been detonated under the whole situation. And all through such a simple thing. Before that there had been no evidence against any of them. But now there was. Simon Templar had been held up and bound and locked in a cellar, and now he was free to tell the tale, with Dyson's evidence to support it.

  That might well be the beginning of the end. Weald had always had a wholesome respect for the tenacity of the police when once they got hold of a solid bone to chew. Throughout his career he had made a point of keeping away from any material contact with them. As long as they were working in the dark against him he could feel safe, but once they could make any definite accusation, and thus get a hold on him, there was no knowing where it might end.

  But in Jill Trelawney there was no sign of weakening.

  "We can still pull through," she said.

  Weald's thin fingers twitched his tie nervously.

  "How can you say that after what we know now?"

  "We're not dead yet. In your way, you're right, of course. We've tripped over about the most ridiculous little thing that we could have tripped over, and if we aren't careful we'll go stumbling over the edge of the precipice. But I'm not giving an imitation of a jelly in an earthquake."

  "Nor am I," said Weald angrily.

  The mocking contempt remained in her eyes, and he knew that he was not believed.

  With a certain grim concession to her sense of humour she remembered the Saint's warning before they left Belgrave Street. The Saint had certainly been right. In the circumstances, Weald was likely to be very much less use than a tin tombstone. She saw the way he put a hand to cover the twitching of his weak mouth, and realized that Stephen Weald was going to pieces rapidly.

  Chapter IV

  HOW JILL TRELAWNEY TOLD A LIE, AND

  SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE NOTHING BUT

  THE TRUTH

  HARRY DONNELL lived in a house in a mean street on the outskirts of Birmingham. It was a curious house, but as soon as he had seen it he knew that few other houses could have fulfilled his requirements so completely, for he had always boasted that if necessary he would resist arrest to the death.

  This house had grown up, somehow, in the very inside of a block. Being completely surrounded by the other houses of the block necessarily deprived its rooms of most of the light of day, but Donnell could not see this as a disadvantage. The same fact made the house very difficult to attack, and this to his mind was compensation enough. In fact, the building could only be approached directly through a straight and narrow alleyway between two of the outer houses.

  He rarely stirred out of doors except on business, preferring to sleep and drink and smoke at home, and amuse himself with his own inscrutable and animal meditations. He was at home when Jill Trelawney and Stephen Weald arrived, and went down to open the door to them himself when he recognized the signal on the bell which showed that the visitors were friendly.

  "Good-afternoon, Miss Trelawney," he said politely, for Harry Donnell prided himself on his accomplishments as a ladies' man. Her manner, however, cut short any courtesies.

  "The Saint's after you," she said bluntly. "Where can we talk?"

  He looked at her, and then led the way upstairs with­out a word.

  They went up two flights of dingy, creaking stairs, for the first and ground floors were devoted to the sleeping accommodations of his gang. On the second floor he opened a door and showed them into a big, bare room, of which the principal articles of furniture appeared to consist of a rough deal table and a case of whisky. This room, like most of the others in the house, was lighted only by a small and dirty window which admitted hardly any light, and the gloom was made gloomier by the fog of stale tobacco smoke which hung in the air.

  Donnell closed the door behind them.

  "Did you say the Saint?"

  "I did. Do you know him?"

  Donnell drew back his lips from a row of black and broken teeth.

  "I met him—once."

  "You look like meeting him again," said the girl shortly.

  Donnell was not immediately impressed. He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it from a tin on the table.

  "What do you mean?"

  "He's after you for that show at Essenden's. He came and told me that he was going to take you himself. We shut him up in the cellar and came to warn you ourselves. But he got away somehow and caught the same train as we did. Weald saw him. We didn't see him again at the other end, but he can't be far behind. In fact, I know how far behind he is. He knows I'm coming here and he's hanging just far enough behind to get me into the trap as well. He's after me, too."

  Donnell looked from her to Weald.

  "Is this a joke?" he demanded.

  And Weald's face told him it was not a joke. He turned to the girl again.

  "Why didn't you get me on the telephone?" he asked harshly. "Isn't that what it's here for?"

  "The exchange told me that the trunk line was out of order," said Jill quietly. "And don't talk to me like that. I don't like it."

  Donnell faced her cold gaze three seconds and then dropped his eyes.

  "No offense," he muttered.

  "Forget it," said the girl briskly. "We've got about three or four minutes, I should say, before Templar turns up. I'd like him to have a welcome. He'll be alone—I'm cer­tain of that. What can you do about it?"

  "There are half a dozen of the boys downstairs."

  "Can you stop him getting in?"

  Donnell grinned.

  "I could stop an army," he bragged.

  "Can you stop the Saint?"

  "Haven't you seen round this house?" asked Donnell. "I've had it ready for years, just for something like this. I'll take you round, if you like, and you can see for yourself."

  Jill tightened the belt of her coat.

  "I'll look round on my own, if you don't mind," she said. "I know what to look for, and it probably isn't what you'd show me. Give Weald a drink while I'm gone—I guess he needs it."

  She went out, and Donnell picked up a bottle and a glass. He poured out four good fingers of the spirit, and Weald grabbed it and drank it neat. Then he turned to Donnell; the fire-water had steadied him up a bit—in a way.

  "You believe it isn't a joke?" he said.

  Donnell nodded.

  "Yes, I believe it now."

  "I'm up against it," panted Weald flabbily. "I'm up against it much more than you are. They can only get you for a bashing, but they can get me for a lot more."

  "Ever beat up a 'tec?"

  "More than that. I can't tell you. They might . . . Donnell, you've got to get us out of this!"

  Donnell's eyebrows came down.

  "What do you mean, get you out of it? What about me?"

  Weald clutched his arm.

  "You don't understand. I've got to get away. I've got
to take the girl with me. Is there any back way out of this —any bolt hole you've prepared? I've got money——"

  Donnell thrust him roughly into a chair and pushed the whisky bottle towards him. Weald helped himself greedily to another half-glassful.

  "Now you're talking," said Donnell. "How much?"

  Weald dragged a note case from his pocket. It bulged. Donnell's eyes fastened on it hungrily.

  "A thousand, Donnell. It's all I can spare. I've got to leave myself some money to get clear."

  "Let's see it."

  Feverishly Weald counted out the notes with shaking fingers and put them on the table. Donnell moistened his thumb and counted them deliberately. Then he put them in his pocket.

  "That cupboard behind you," he said. "The back of it's a sliding door. You'll find some stairs. Go right down. There's a tunnel under the block and the street, and it comes up in the cellar of a house on the other side."

  "But you've got to hold Templar up."

  Donnell struck his chest with a huge fist.

  "Me? I'll hold the Saint up. I don't run away from any­one—but you can clear out when you want to. You'd be more trouble than use, anyway."

  Weald swallowed the taunt without a protest.

  "All right. As soon as the girl comes back you get out and say you're going to warn your gang. I'll look after the rest."

  Donnell sat down heavily on a truckle bed in one corner. He took a massive revolver from his pocket, spilled the cartridges into his hand, and squinted up the barrel. He spun the cylinder with his fingers, tested the hammer action to his satisfaction, and reloaded the gun method­ically.

  "What's the idea?" he asked laconically. "You sweet on her?"

  Weald nodded, with the bottle in his hand.

  "That's not the half of it. I've been wanting her for months. I thought I'd do it gradually, working with her and making her like me. But there isn't time for any more fooling about. If the police are going to get me I'm going to get her first. I don't care if it's the last thing I do. Donnell—on the train—she was sneering at me!"

  "Anyone would," said Donnell unemotionally. "A white-livered rat like you!"

  Weald wiped his mouth. The whisky was going to his head.