"Child," said the Saint, "is that still biting?"
"The others were in it for money."
"I took a hundred thousand francs off Essenden in Paris. It would have been two hundred thousand if we hadn't gone into partnership. Yes, I know—you're a dead loss to me. But there was that little joke I've mentioned more than once, if you remember."
"Is that your secret?"
"One of them. Didn't I tell you I always have been crazy? That's very important. If I hadn't been crazy, there'd have been no joke, and the Lord alone knows what would have happened to the Angels of Doom; but certainly there'd have been a lot less mirth and horseplay in history than there is now. . . . One day, when this story's over, I'll tell you all about it. All I can say now is that there was one thing I vowed to do before I went respectable; and I can tell you it was well worth doing. Will that do for to-day, Jill?"
He saw the smiling perplexity in her face and the whimsical shake of her head, and laughed. And then he looked at his watch and stood up.
"Do you mind if I go?" he asked. "It's my bedtime."
"At one o'clock in the afternoon?"
He nodded.
"I told you I hadn't had any sleep to speak of for two nights. And to-night I'm going to call on a most respectable relative, and I don't want to look too dissipated. He mightn't be so ready to believe in my virtues as you are."
She was surprised into an obvious remark.
"I didn't know you had any relatives."
"Didn't you? I had a father and a mother, among others. It was most extraordinary. The papers at the time were full of it."
"You mean the Police News?"
"I don't remember that the Police News was interested in me just then," said the Saint gravely. "I rather think their interest developed later."
She had dropped into banter to cover up her breach of good criminal manners; but she was still inquisitive enough to try to press a serious question.
"Have you honestly got any relatives who still know you?"
It was beautifully put—that touch of sympathetic curiosity, the quiet assumption that they were now intimate enough to exchange notes. But Simon only laughed.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "this isn't a really truly relative, although I call him Auntie Ethel. But he views my indiscretions with a tolerant eye, and still believes that I shall reform one day. Now let's talk about supralapsarianism. I can't promise when I'll be in again, Jill, but it'll be as soon as I can make it. ...
She went with him to the door and watched him down the stairs, and felt unaccountably lonely when he had gone.
Simon went straight back to Upper Berkeley Mews. He had not been joking when he spoke of going to bed. He would have to be up again that night, and Heaven alone knew when he would get his next full night's rest.
But since he had not noticed Duodecimo Gugliemi before, the Saint did not miss him on the way home.
2
The Saint had been gone eight hours when a peal on the bell rang sharply through the studio and set the girl's heart pounding against her ribs.
No one should have rung that bell. The Saint himself had a key, and no tradesmen ever called, for obvious reasons. Who it could be outside, therefore, except a detective whom the Saint had not been so clever in shaking off as he had believed : . .
As she stood by the table with her brain in a whirl the ring was repeated.
She went to the window and looked out and down into the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen there—no signs of a cordon or even of one or two men told off to wait for an escape by another exit. As for the man at the door, it was impossible to inspect him; for the entrance of the studio was on the third and top floor of the building, and the architect, not knowing that his building was ever to be used for sheltering a wanted criminal, had omitted to provide a window looking out onto the landing, or any other similar means of inspecting callers before opening the front door.
Jill Trelawney thought all this out in a flash, and made her decision.
Whoever it was, she would gain nothing by refusing to open the door. If it were the police, the block would be well surrounded, and the door would eventually be forced if she refused to answer the bell. If it were anyone else . . . She had no idea who it could be, but she must still answer.
The little automatic that she was never without in those days was in her hand when she went to the door and opened it.
The first sight of the man outside was reassuring. Certainly he was not a detective, whatever else he might be— he was far too small and slim ever to have succeeded in entering the ranks of the metropolitan police, even if he had wanted to. A second glance told her that he was not likely even to have wanted to; for there was something unmistakably un-English about the exaggerated nattiness of his attire which would have marked him for a foreigner anywhere, even without the evidence of his thin dark features and his restless dark eyes.
"Mees Trelawney?"
After only a fractional hesitation she admitted the charge. His manner was so confident that she realized immediately that a bluff would carry no weight. At the same time, although he seemed so certain of her identity, there was nothing menacing or even alarming about his manner.
But in a moment he explained himself.
"I come from the part of Meester Templar. He has been arresting."
A sudden fear took her by the throat.
"Arrested? When?"
"Very near here. He meet me last night and say he has work for me. This morning I meet him again, he bring me along here, and he tell me to wait outside while he go in, and then we go off together and he tell me what it is to do. Then we get a little way from here, and a man recognize him in the street and say 'I want you.' "
The visitor waved his arms expressively.
"And Mr. Templar told you to come here?"
"Oh, no. But he look at me, and I know what to do."
She understood. The Saint could not have said anything before the police without giving her away. . "Who are you?" she asked.
"I am Duodecimo Gugliemi," said the little man dramatically. "Now I tell you. Meester Templar, he get in a taxicab with the detective, and I get in another taxicab and I follow. Then a piece of paper come out of the taxi-cab window, and I stop my taxicab and pick it up. Here it is."
He flourished a muddy scrap of paper, and she took it from him and deciphered the smudged scrawl:
Wait in car outside Scotland Yard ten o'clock.
S.
"Why didn't you come before?" she snapped. "If this was only just after he left here—-"
"I had to get a car. It is outside now. A friend of mine is driver. Meester Templar, he know my friend also."
"Wait a minute."
She left him at the door and was back in a moment, slipping into her coat and cramming her hat onto her head. Her little gun was in its holster at her side, under her coat.
"Now we'll go."
The Italian was scuttling down the stairs in front of her, and she followed quickly. There was a closed car standing by the curb, and Gugliemi opened the door for her. She stepped in, and he followed, and the car began to move off almost at once.
It was only then that she saw that thin gauze blinds were drawn across all the windows. She sat quite still.
"What are those curtains doing?"
"You must not see where we go. It would be dangerous for you to see."
She sat in silence, with a delirious kaleidoscope of conflicting speculations whirling over in her brain. She was sure only of one thing, and that was that she had been incredibly stupid. She peered at the man beside her, but he was gazing steadily ahead, and seemed to have temporarily forgotten her existence.
Presently, when her watch told her they had been driving for nearly half an hour, Gugliemi spoke:
"We arrive. You must let me put this over your eyes."
There was a flash of a white handkerchief in his hand.
"Is—that—so?"
"I am afraid you cannot refuse. I must tie this over your eyes, and you must not make me be violent about it, because I do not like being violent."
She waited. The blur of white moved towards her, and she felt the soft caress of silk on her face. And then she twitched her automatic from its holster and rammed it into the man's ribs.
"You're moving too fast, Duodecimo," she said softly. "Think again—and think quickly!"
The Italian continued imperturbably with his task.
"I'll count three," she rapped. "You can start saying your prayers now. One—"
"And then the car stop, the police come, and you are arresting," he replied calmly. "But do not trouble, Mees Trelawney, I have already unloaded your gun."
She realized that the car had stopped, and could have wept with rage against herself.
"Will you get out?"
She could feel rather than see the stronger light that entered as the door was opened; but she had been well blindfolded. She could not even get a glimpse of the ground under her feet. Even a change to lift the bandage for a moment was not given her, for both her wrists were firmly grasped.
"There are some steps down——"
He guided her along what seemed to be a passage, up a few more steps that grated like bare stone under her shoes, round a corner.
"Now there are some stairs."
She climbed them with his hand on her arm guiding her—four flights—and then he opened a door and led her through. In a few more paces he checked her, and she felt something hard pressed against the back of her knees.
"Sit down."
She obeyed. She felt his hands at her wrists, the rough contact of tightening leather straps, and the cold touch of a metal buckle. . . . Then the same thing at her ankles. . . . Four straps held her as firmly as steel chains; and then the handkerchief was untied.
The room in which she found herself was small and dingily furnished. The paper was peeling off the walls, and the carpet was patched and frayed at the edges. There was a truckle bed in one corner, and on a rickety table stood a bottle, a few glasses, and the remains of a sandwich reposing on a piece of newspaper.
She was sitting in a solid oaken chair which seemed to have no place in that room and might even have been acquired for the occasion. The straps which he had just fastened pinned her wrists to the arms of it, and her ankles to the legs, and she knew at once that she would never be able to free herself unaided if she sat there for the rest of her life. So much she knew even before she pitched all her strength against the seasoned leather, and found the little Italian watching her with a kind of detached amusement.
"I do not think you will escape, Mees Trelawney," he said, "so I will excuse myself. I will send my friend away, and then I will come back and talk to you." The bright little eyes gleamed under the brim of his hat. "I have very interesting things to say to you—very interesting."
And as the door closed behind him something like a cold ghostly hand seemed to touch the back of her neck, sending a clammy tingle over her scalp and an icy numbness sinking down into the pit of her stomach.
Now that she knew he had nothing to do with the Saint, she wondered if the Saint knew anything about him—— if it were possible that the Saint might have noticed him at some time. It meant, at least, that the story of the Saint's arrest was probably untrue, mere bait for the trap into which she had walked so blindly. But how soon would the Saint find out, and, even then, what could he do? Such a little time could make so much difference. . . . And on the upturned dial of her wrist watch, almost under her eyes, three impersonal hands traced the crawling of time into eternity.
She watched their remorseless movements with a dull apathy of fascination, and saw the plodding minutes lengthen into an hour. She had no idea what Gugliemi could be doing; it did not seem to be useful to wonder. Probably he was drinking. . . . One hour became two. Something seemed to snap in her brain and make her insensible to the passage of time. What would the Saint be doing? . . . She was getting cramp and her nose was tickling. . . .
And then footsteps sounded outside, and the handle of the door turned with a rattle that made her heart leap into her mouth and flop back into a furious hammering. A crazy hope that it might even be the Saint himself swept through her head—she had unconsciously attained to such a faith in the Saint, had fallen so deeply under his spell, without knowing it at the time, that she could have believed him capable of any miracle. . . . But the sound heralded only the return of the dapper Gugliemi, now lightened of his hat and coat.
He came into the room and locked the door behind him, and the girl raised her head.
"You've been a long time with your friend," she remarked.
"Yes." He smiled. "He was a little difficult. But I have sent him away now, and he will not come back for two hours. That will give me plenty of time. I hope you are becoming interested."
"Not enough to raise my temperature. And I didn't invite you to sit down. Even if you are disguised as a gentleman——"
"Mees Trelawney——"
"Or perhaps you aren't disguised as a gentleman. I admit the disguise wasn't very successful, but I thought that was what it was meant to be."
Gugliemi adjusted his tie with delicately manicured hands.
"Do you know what is going to happen to you?" he inquired.
His English had become more fluent, perhaps because his first agitation, which had not been entirely simulated, was wearing off.
"I told you I wasn't interested," she said.
Watching him, she appreciated the circumstances coldbloodedly. Even her useless automatic had been taken from her; and she knew, from the grip that he had once taken on her wrists, that even if she had not been strapped to the chair he could have handled her as he pleased, slight as he was. And then ... Of course, the story of the Saint's arrest might possibly be true; but it was unlikely. Her thoughts were muddled by the feeling of exasperation which ran through them. For her, after turning the laws of England inside out, and making enough trouble to whiten the hair of every man in Scotland Yard, to have fallen for a bushel of birdseed like that! But how long would it be before the Saint missed her?
Since she had been installed in the studio he had called at least every other day. Sometimes on consecutive days. At the best, reckoning upon his previous habits, he could not be expected to call again before to-morrow; and two hours, according to Gugliemi, were all the time that there was to spare.
And yet things were moving faster than they had been before, and it was more than possible that the Saint might have reason to see her again that night. And when once he missed her, he wouldn't be likely to accumulate so much moss under his feet that it would seriously interfere with his travelling. But could she hold out so long—long enough to give him the time he would require to make up the lost ground?
"It is necessary," said Gugliemi, "that you should be killed. I have been told so, and I myself have been paid to do it. I did not know before that these things were done in England, but now I am told that they are. In Italy, of course, if anyone is a trouble he disappears— poof!—like that. But I did not know it was done in England until I was told that you must disappear. And they told me that if you disappeared completely they would not send me back to Italy. That is very important, because if I went back to Italy I should be sent to prison at once."
She stared at him, hardly believing her ears.
"Who told you this?" she asked in a strained voice.
"I was told," said Gugliemi. "But I was not told to do it like this. This was an idea of my own. I was told to take my little gun and find out where you lived, and go in and shoot you and walk out again, and no questions would be asked. But I saw you once, when you looked out of the window I was watching in the street outside, and I decided that it could not be done like that. Not with anyone so young and beautiful."
He kissed his fingers to her, elegantly.
"So I have brought you to my little home. You have disappeared, an
d so the police will be satisfied. As for me, I also will be satisfied, and everything will be quite all right."
The ridiculous preciousness of his speech and gesture made the situation grotesque, and yet ...
She looked round the bare, mean room, made dingier, if possible, by the fact that it was lighted only by a feeble gas jet in one corner. And while Gugliemi deliberated his next sentence, rocking gently in his chair, she listened in the silence, and heard no other sound in the house. Probably it was empty—Gugliemi would not have risked leaving her ungagged in a place where she might cry out and attract attention.
He seemed to read her thoughts with the restless dark eyes that searched her face with blatant appreciation of her beauty.
"No," he said, "there is ho one here. We are in Lambeth, and this is the caretaker's room over an empty warehouse. You can cry out if you like, but no one will hear you. And as soon as you promise me that you will behave yourself, I will take those straps away and you will be free."
"So," she said calmly, "Mr. Templar hasn't been arrested?"
He spread out his hands.
"How should I know? That was a story I made up. When he left your house, I did not follow him any more. I was not interested in him. Perhaps he has been arrested, perhaps he has not. Who can say?"
She grasped that one fact as a drowning man might clutch at a straw.
And then, as if in answer to her thoughts, somewhere down in the depths below there was & thunder of knocking on the door.
Chapter XI
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR INTERRUPTED A PARTY,
AND MR. CULLIS WAS AT HOME
GUGLIEMI must have thought that it was his friend returning, for his dark eyes opened wide when he saw Simon Templar.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"Who are you?" inquired the Saint, inspecting him from crown to toe with a disparaging eye.
"I am the caretaker."
"Then I hope you will take great care," said the Saint.
The Italian was starting to push the door in his face, but Simon pushed harder, and walked in.
The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady) Page 17