The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

stuff. But there was another kind of gun before tackling which Simon Templar al­ways paused to take a deep breath and recite rapidly the verse from the hymn which contains a line about shelters from the stormy blast; and it was undoubtedly a specimen of that kind of gun which was spluttering a horizontal hailstorm of lead sufficiently close to his direction to be appreciably unpleasant.

Taking the breath, and postponing the recitation to a later date, Simon put up his head again; and as he did so the fire ceased, and the car picked up speed with a rush and swooped into the emptiness of Berkeley Square.

The Saint, standing at the corner of the mews and trying to draw a bead on one of the departing tires as the car turned into Mount Street, was briskly arrested.

'Don't be a bigger fool than you can help,' he snarled; and the constable, recognizing him, released him with a stammered apology.

'It was a car, sir——'

'You amaze me,' said the Saint, in awe. 'I thought it was a team of racing camels. Get the number down in your book.'

The policeman obeyed; and Simon, with a shrug,turned and shouldered his way back to the house through the nucleus of a gaping crowd.

He found Orace dabbing an ear with a stained hand­kerchief.

'Hurt?'

'Nossir—just a splinter er wood. They were firin' low.'

'It's more painful through the stomach,' said the Saint enigmatically, and went on upstairs.

The pursuit of the car from which the machine gun had been fired wasn't Simon Templar's business. It could be carried on just as effectively by the regulars—or just as ineffectively, for the number plates were certain to have been changed. But it made the Saint think.

When the assistant commissioner called in later for the story, however, Simon showed no signs of perturbation.

'It was Budd's idea, of course. He's seen service in Chicago. But machine guns in the streets of London are nothing new on me—I've had it happen before. There's no blamed originality in this racket, that's the trouble.'

'They seem to think you're important.'

'There's certainly some personal bias against me,' ad­mitted the Saint innocently. 'I was expecting a demonstration—I had further words with Jill Trelawney yester­day. Cigarette?'

'Thanks.'

The commissioner helped himself. He was a grizzled, hard-featured man who had worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder, and he had all the taciturn abrupt­ness common to men who have risen in the world by ' nothing but a relentless devotion to the ambition of rising in the world.

'How did she strike you?'

'She didn't,' said the Saint perversely.'I think she would have, though, but for the low cunning with which I made my escape. She's a sweet child.'

'Charming,' agreed the commissioner ironically. 'So gentle! Such endearing ways!'

'Ever meet her?'

'No. I knew her father, of course.'

Simon grinned.

'He never made any