The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

'No one will stop you going back to your posse, Temp­lar.'

'I didn't think anyone would.'

He glanced at his watch.

'They'll be expecting me in another five minutes. I only came because I didn't want to disappoint you—and because I thought you might have something interesting to say.'

'I've nothing more to—say.'

'But lots of things to do?'

'Possibly.'

That extraordinarily mocking smile bared his teeth.

'If only,' he murmured softly—'if only your father could hear those sweet words fall from your gentle lips!'

'You'll leave my father out of it——'

'You'd like me to, wouldn't you? But that won't make me do it.'

There was a renewed hardness in her eyes that had no right to be there.

'My father was framed,' she said in a low voice.

'There was a proper inquiry. An assistant commission­er of police isn't dismissed in disgrace for nothing. And is that an excuse for anything you do, anyway?'

'It satisfies me.'

Her voice held a depth of passion that for a moment turned even Simon Templar into a sober listener. She had never flinched from his sardonically bantering stare, and now she met it more defiantly than ever. She went on, in that low, passionate voice: 'The shock killed him. You know it could have been nothing else but that. And he died denying the charge——'

'So you think you've a right to take vengeance on the department for him?'

'They condemned him for a thing he'd never done. And the mud sticks to me as well, still, a year after his death. So I'll give them something to condemn me for.'

The Saint looked at her.

'And what about that boy over in the States?' he asked quietly, and saw her start.

'What do you know about him?' she asked.

The Saint shrugged.

'It's surprising what a lot of odd things I know,' he answered. 'I think we may talk some more on that sub­ject one day—Jill. Some day when you've forgotten this nonsense, and the Angels of Doom have grown their tails.'

For a span of silence he held her eyes steadily—the big golden eyes which, he knew by his own instinct, were made for such gentle things as the softness into which he had betrayed them for a moment. And then that instant's light died out of them again, and the tawny hardness re­turned. She laughed a little.

'I'll go back when the slate's clean,' she said; and so the Saint slipped lightly back into the role he had chosen to play.

'You missed your vocation,' he said sweetly. 'You ought to have been writing detective stories. Vengeance —and the Angels of Doom! Joke!'

He swung round in his smooth sweeping way and picked his hat out of the chair. Weald seemed about to say something, and, meeting the Saint's suddenly direct and interrogative gaze,