The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

machine-gun fire; and in that again his judg­ment had proved to be right. On the other hand, he had treated letters and parcels delivered to him, and taxis which offered themselves for his hire, with considerable suspicion. He had as yet found no justification for this carefulness, but he realized that the calm could only be the herald of a storm. Possibly this third visit to Belgrave Street would precipitate the storm. He was prepared for it to do so.

He was kept waiting outside for some time before his summons was answered. He did not stand at the top of the stairs, however, while he was waiting, in a position where sudden death might reach him through the letter box, but placed himself on the pavement behind the shelter of one of the pillars of the portico. From behind this, with one eye looking round it, he was able to see the slight movement of a curtain in a ground- floor window as some­one looked out to discover who the visitor was. Simon allowed his face to be seen, and then withdrew into cover until the door opened. Then he entered quickly.

'Miss Trelawney is expecting you,' said Wells as he closed the door.

The Saint glanced searchingly round the hall and up the stairs as far as he could see. There was no one else about.

He smiled seraphically.

'You're getting quite truthful in your old age, Fred­die,' he remarked, and went up the stairs.

The girl met him on the landing.

'I got your message to say you were coming.'

'I hope it gave you a thrill,' said the Saint earnestly.

He looked past her into the sitting room.

'Are you staying to tea again?' she asked sweetly.

'Before I've finished,' said Simon, 'I expect you'll be wanting me to stay the week.'

'Come in.'

'Thanks. I will. Aren't we getting polite?'

He went through.

In the sitting room he found Weald and Budd, as he had expected to find them, though they had not been exposed to the field of view which he had from the land­ing through the open door.

'Hullo, Weald! And are you looking for Waldstein, too?'

Weald's sallow face went a shade paler, but he did not answer at once. The Saint's mocking gaze shifted to Budd.

'Been doing any more fighting lately, Pinky? I heard that some tough guy beat up a couple of little boys in Shoreditch the other night, and I thought of you at once.'

Pinky's fists clenched.

'If you're looking for trouble, Templar,' he said pinkly, 'I'm waiting for you, see?'

'I know that,' said the Saint offensively. 'I could hear you breathing as I came up the stairs.'

He heard the door close behind him, and turned to face the girl again.

It was a careless move, but he had not been expecting the hostilities to be reopened quite so quickly. The fact that the mere presence of his own charming personality might be considered by anyone else as a hostile movement in itself had escaped him. In these circumstances there is, by convention, a certain amount of warbling and woofling before any active unpleasantness is displayed. Simon Templar had always found this so—it took a certain amount of time for his enemies to get over the confident effrontery of his own bearing, and, in these days, their ingrained respect for the law which he was temporarily representing—before they nerved themselves to action. But this was not