The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

Their guns covered each other steadily—the deadlock was complete.

'What do you want?'

Cullis spoke harshly. His eyes, straining behind her, rested on the open top of the desk, and she saw a slight quiver of movement under his moustache.

'It should be obvious,' said the girl.

His eyes held hers. He could not have recognized her, but an intuitive idea seemed to flash into his brain. She could almost read its arrival in his face, and stood without flinching as he took a pace forward and scanned her more closely.

'Jill Trelawney!'

She saw the gleam of understanding that flashed under his lowered brows, and answered with a sudden tense urg­ency in her voice as she saw the stirring of his index fin­ger behind the trigger guard of his revolver.

'Quite right. But don't you think you'd better hear one thing before you shoot?'

In some subtle way, her tone commanded audience. Cullis relaxed a fraction.

'Why?'

'Because it might save you from doing something very foolish.'

'You're very thoughtful.'

'I'm careful,' said the girl quietly. 'Cullis, have you heard so little about me that you really believe I'd be so easy to catch as this? Did you even think I came here alone? . . . Your wisdom teeth are not cut yet. Perhaps you'd forgotten—the Saint!'

He shifted his feet without answering, and there was a grim purposefulness in her voice which dominated him    in spite of himself. And she followed up her advantage without an instant's pause.

'I didn't come here alone. I have some nerve, Cullis, but burgling an assistant commissioner's house single-handed wants a bit more nerve even than I've got. I took this room while the Saint went over the rest of the house—looking for you!  ... I don't know how you missed each other, but you wouldn't have heard him, or even seen him. He's like a cat in the dark. He might have found you in a passage, or on the stairs—anywhere. But maybe he didn't want to. Maybe he just followed you like a ghost, waiting for his best chance. Maybe he's coming up behind you now'—her voice rose a little—'and when he's right behind you——GET HIM, SAINT!'

She spoke with a sudden fierce sharpness, like the crack of a gun, and Cullis took the bait ... for a sufficient fraction  of a  second.

He jerked his head half round involuntarily, and that was enough. Enough for Jill Trelawney to shift her auto­matic unerringly and touch the trigger. . . . The roar of the explosion battered against the walls, drowning the metallic smack of her bullet finding its mark. But she never missed. Cullis's right hand went strangely limp; his revolver flopped dully into the carpet, and he stood staring stupidly at the pulped wreckage of his thumb.

'Don't move.' She stepped back towards the curtains, and the weapon in her hand never wavered from its mark by one millimetre. Gently she edged herself between the hangings, and stopped there a moment to speak her farewell.

'I might have finished the job with that shot,' she said, 'but I still want you alive. ... I expect you'll be hear­ing from me again.'

At that very moment she heard a heavy footfall behind her, but she could not wait. Whoever it might be, she must take her chance—that single shot she had fired, ringing through the open window, must have thundered over the half of Hampstead, and