The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

Weald was going to pieces rapidly.

Chapter IV

HOW JILL TRELAWNEY TOLD A LIE, AND

SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE NOTHING BUT

THE TRUTH

 

HARRY DONNELL lived in a house in a mean street on the outskirts of Birmingham. It was a curious house, but as soon as he had seen it he knew that few other houses could have fulfilled his requirements so completely, for he had always boasted that if necessary he would resist arrest to the death.

This house had grown up, somehow, in the very inside of a block. Being completely surrounded by the other houses of the block necessarily deprived its rooms of most of the light of day, but Donnell could not see this as a disadvantage. The same fact made the house very difficult to attack, and this to his mind was compensation enough. In fact, the building could only be approached directly through a straight and narrow alleyway between two of the outer houses.

He rarely stirred out of doors except on business, preferring to sleep and drink and smoke at home, and amuse himself with his own inscrutable and animal meditations. He was at home when Jill Trelawney and Stephen Weald arrived, and went down to open the door to them himself when he recognized the signal on the bell which showed that the visitors were friendly.           

'Good-afternoon, Miss Trelawney,' he said politely, for Harry Donnell prided himself on his accomplishments as a ladies' man. Her manner, however, cut short any courtesies.

'The Saint's after you,' she said bluntly. 'Where can we talk?'

He looked at her, and then led the way upstairs with­out a word.

They went up two flights of dingy, creaking stairs, for the first and ground floors were devoted to the sleeping accommodations of his gang. On the second floor he opened a door and showed them into a big, bare room, of which the principal articles of furniture appeared to consist of a rough deal table and a case of whisky. This room, like most of the others in the house, was lighted only by a small and dirty window which admitted hardly any light, and the gloom was made gloomier by the fog of stale tobacco smoke which hung in the air.

Donnell closed the door behind them.

'Did you say the Saint?'

'I did. Do you know him?'

Donnell drew back his lips from a row of black and broken teeth.

'I met him—once.'

'You look like meeting him again,' said the girl shortly.

Donnell was not immediately impressed. He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it from a tin on the table.

'What do you mean?'

'He's after you for that show at Essenden's. He came and told me that he was going to take you himself. We shut him up in the cellar and came to warn you ourselves. But he got away somehow and caught the same train as we did. Weald saw him. We didn't see him again at the other end, but he can't be far behind. In fact, I know how far behind he is. He knows I'm coming here and he's hanging just far enough behind to get me into the trap as well. He's after me, too.'

Donnell looked from her to Weald.

'Is this a