The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

why I believe him. Have you had the report from Records on the general features of the show?'

'I've given them the details. The report should be through any minute now.'

The report, as a matter of fact, was brought up a few minutes later. The Saint ran through the list of names submitted as possible authors of the crime, and selected one without much hesitation.

'Harry Donnell's the man.'

'At Essenden's?' interjected Cullis skeptically, 'Harry Donnell works the Midlands. Besides, his gang don't go in for ordinary burglary.'

'Who said it was an ordinary burglary?' asked the Saint. 'I tell you Harry Donnell's the man on that list who'd be most pleased to take on an easy job of bashing like that. I could probably tell your Records Office a few things they didn't know about Harry—you seem to forget that I used to know everything there was to know about the various birds in his line of business. I'm going to pull him in. Before I go I'm going to tell Jill Trelawney that I'm going to do it. I'll go round and see her now. She'll probably try to fix me for some sticky end this time. But that's a minor detail. Having failed in that she'll try to get on the phone to Donnell and warn him—I expect he went back to Birmingham this morning. You'll arrange for the exchange operator to tell her that the line to Birmingham is out of order. Then, if I know anything about Jill Tre­lawney, she'll set out to try to beat me to Birmingham Herself. She's got to keep up her reputation for rescues, especially when the man to be rescued is wanted for doing a job for her. . . .'

He outlined his plan in more detail.

It was one which had come into his head on the spur of the moment, but the more he examined it the better it seemed to be. There was no evidence against Jill Tre­lawney on any of the scores which were at present held against her, and the Saint would have been bored stiff to spend his time sifting over ancient history in the hope of building up a live case out of dead material. Besides— which was far more important—that procedure wouldn't have fitted in at all with the real ambition that the story of the Angels of Doom had brought into his young life. And to set Jill Trelawney racing into Birmingham to the rescue of Harry Donnell struck him as being a much more entertaining way of spending the day.

In spite of the two attempts which had already been made on his life, he bore the girl no malice. Far from it. The Saint was used to that kind of thing. In fact, he had already found more amusement in the pursuit of Jill Trelawney than he had anticipated when he first set forth to make her acquaintance, and he was now preparing to find some more—but this, however, he did not confide to the commissioner.

They talked for a while longer, and the Saint left cer­tain definite instructions to be passed on to the appropriate quarter. And then, as the Saint rose to go, the com­missioner was moved to revert to a thought suggested by the original subject of the interview.

'Isn't it curious,' said the commissioner, 'that only the other night you should have been asking whether there might be a reason for the Angels to have a feud with Essenden?'

'Isn't it a scream?' agreed the Saint.

He set off for Belgrave Street in one of his moods of Saintly optimism.

It struck him that he was spending a great deal of his time in Belgrave Street. This would be his third visit that week.

He had no illusions about the possible outcome of it— the gun with which he had provided himself before leaving testified to that. A man cannot make himself as con­sistently unpopular as, for his own inscrutable reasons, it had in this case pleased the Saint to make himself, without there growing up, sooner or later, a state of ten­sion in which something has to break. The thing broken should, of course, have been Simon Templar, but up to that time the thing broken had somehow failed to, be Simon Templar. But this time ...

In the three days since his last visit life had been al­lowed to deal peacefully with him. He had used the milk from outside his front door with a sublime confidence in its purity, and had not been disappointed. He had walked in and out of the house without any fear of being again enfiladed by