The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

criminal, and your accomplice is wanted for murder. Seeing that the game's up, you're going to make one last desperate effort to beat me and get away. And in self-defense I shall have to shoot you—-'

'Just like you had to shoot Gugliemi,' said the Saint, almost in a whisper; and Cullis went white to the lips.

Then the mask-like features contorted suddenly.

'How did you know that?'

'I am a clairvoyant,' said the Saint easily.

'And yet,' said Cullis, 'the trick is still good enough——'

'Not quite good enough,' said the Saint. And there was a sudden swift urgency in his voice, for at that moment he saw death staring him in the face—death in Cullis's pale blue eyes, and death in the twist of Cullis's lips, and death quivering in Cullis's right hand. 'Not quite good enough. Because there's one more instalment to my story—and you'd better hear it before you shoot!'

For a moment he thought that Cullis would shoot and chance the consequences, and he loosened his muscles for a desperate leap. And the assistant commissioner's pose slackened by a fraction.

'I'll hear what you have to say. But you needn't expect to get away with another bluff like the one Trelawney put over last night.'

'And it was such a good bluff, too,' said the Saint sadly, with one eyebrow cocked at the assistant commissioner's bandaged thumb. '

And then he smiled into Cullis's eyes.

'But we don't need to use bluff any more,' he said. 'I'm strong for having everything in its right place, and the place for bluff has gone by, Cullis.'

'Get on!'

'I am a brilliantly clever man,' said the Saint, in his airy way, 'and picnics like this are sitting rabbits to me. I worked this one out for your special benefit, and you've enjoyed it so much, too. . . . You see, it would have been perfectly easy to bump you off, but that wasn't all we wanted. Waldstein and Essenden had been bounced too rapidly, and we weren't making the same error over you. We wanted to hear you sing to us here before you passed on to join the herald angels; but we quite ap­preciated that we weren't a sufficient audience. Jill and I are simple souls whom the world has used hardly, and Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the sea of life—'

'Cut the cackle,' rasped Cullis, with a new venom in his voice. 'If you're just trying to gain time——'

'I'm unbosoming in my own style, brother,' said the Saint plaintively. 'Give me a break. And now where was I? ... Oh, yes. Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the——'

'I'll give you three minutes more. If you've got anything to say——'

'O. K., Algernon. Then let's put it that your word would probably outweigh anything that Jill or I or Duodecimo could say. So there had to be a witness who couldn't be challenged. And who could be a more ideal witness than the chief commissioner himself?'

The Saint saw Cullis's eyes narrow down to mere pin points, and laughed again.

'I went to the chief commissioner. I borrowed his own house. We came down here this evening and set the stage very carefully. Those bullet holes which you saw in the door upstairs were placed there three hours ago by special permission of the proprietor. The bars on the window were installed this afternoon and chopped about while you were travelling down. I personally staged the scene, wrote the dialogue, and produced the soul-stirring drama now drawing to its close—and all in one rehearsal. A microphone behind that picture of an indecently exposed lady throwing geraniums at a