The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

moustache.

'Dyson rang up to say you were caught at Belgrave Street. He said he was to tell me that you wanted to be left there, and I was to come to Birmingham and take Donnell.'

The Saint looked at him thoughtfully.

'Is this another of the old Trelawney touches of humour?' he murmured. 'I never sent you that message. What's more, I'll swear Dyson never sent it, either. He was never out of my sight from the time I was stuck up in Belgrave Street until a few seconds before I left. Some­one's been pulling your leg!'

He bent his eyes on the commissioner's nether limbs as if he really entertained a morbid hope that he would find one of them longer than the other. .   Cullis pushed his hat back from his forehead.

'Just what's the idea?'

'There's some funny scheme behind it,' said the Saint, with the air of a man announcing an epoch-making dis­covery, 'and we've yet to learn what it is. However, since you're here, you can be of some use. Beetle round to the local police and make what arrangements you like. They can surround the block and be ready to take over Donnell when I bring him out. That'll save me some time.'

'You're going in alone?'

'I'm afraid I've got to go in alone,' said the Saint sadly. 'You see, this is my nurse's afternoon off. . . . See you at a dairy later, old pomegranate.'

He tapped Cullis encouragingly in the stomach, climbed into the taxi, and closed the door, leaving the commissioner standing there with a blank look on his face.

He did not drive directly up to the mouth of the alley­way which admitted to the front door of Donnell's fortress. That would have been too blatant even for Simon Templar. Besides, reckless as he might be, he did not be­lieve in suicide, and the long, straight alleyway which he would have to traverse if he approached in the ordinary way would leave even the worst of marksmen very little chance of missing him. And the Saint had no interest in any funeral festivities in which he could not occupy a vertical position.

He drove instead to a tobacconist's shop round the corner, and there he discharged the taxi. He went in and bought a packet of cigarettes, and then he showed his police identity card.

'Do you live in the rooms over here, or do they belong to someone else?'

'No, sir. I live there.'

'I'll go right up,' said the Saint. 'Don't bother to show me the way. You stay right here and carry on business as usual. I shan't come back by this route, so don't wait up late for me.'

He went through the shop and up the stairs.

From a window on the landing of the first floor he was able to survey the battleground.

It was unpromising. Donnell's house formed, as has been explained, a kind of island site in the centre of the block, separated by a matter of about fourteen feet from the houses that surrounded it. The four pairs of walls which surrounded the square canyon thus formed were bare of any convenience for passing between them except the solid ground at the bottom. And that was certain to be watched and covered from the windows of Donnell's house. From the window where he looked out, Simon Templar might, if he had been that kind of a lunatic, have considered the possibility of running a plank across to the window opposite and entering the house that way. It is interesting to record that he was not that kind of lunatic—he had, amongst other weaknesses, a distinct urge towards being buried in one piece, when his time came.