The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

There was, however, one other solution.

He went on up the stairs. On the third floor the stairs came to an end, but above his head were a trap-door and a swinging ladder. He pulled the ladder down and mounted it.

He found himself in a kind of attic, lumbered with boxes and odds and ends of broken furniture. It had one cobwebbed window, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through; but Simon squeezed through it and emerged on the leads. At that point, from where he stood with his heels in the gutter, leaning back against the tiles of the roof with a sixty-foot drop in front of him, the flat roof of Donnell's house, with a high embrasured wall running round it and a kind of penthouse in the centre, was about six feet below him, and still fourteen feet away. But it was in the convenient position of not being over­looked by any of the windows from which his attack was likely to be watched for.

The Saint bent his knees and braced himself. He tested the strength of the gutter, found it firm, and without further hesitation launched himself into space.

He cleared the wall and landed on the flat concrete of Donnell's roof, stumbling forward and saving himself with his hands. Then he picked himself up and released the safety catch of his automatic.

He circumnavigated the penthouse warily. It was square and solidly built, with narrow barred windows, and had obviously been designed as a point of vantage from which any attempt to reach the house over the roofs could be repelled. On that occasion, however, the possi­bility seemed to have been overlooked, for no shots came from it to greet him.

He worked his way round it and came to a massive door faced with iron. There was no handle on the outside, and the Saint tried to open it without success.

He gave up the task after a few seconds, and went and looked over the wall down the face of the building.

There was a window directly below him, about six feet down, at the point where he had chanced to look over. He climbed up on the wall and looked down at it, consider­ing the lie of the land.

The wall was about five feet high. Lowering himself over it, he was able to rest his toes on a ledge about three inches wide which ran round the outside. Then he had to stoop quickly and allow himself to fall literally into space, catching at the ledge with his fingers as he did so. For one hair-raising second he, had the awful sensation of hurtling downwards to certain death; but Simon Tem­plar's nerves were like ice, and he knew the strength of his hands. His hooked fingers on the ledge brought him up with a jerk at the full stretch of his arms, and he hung there for a few seconds while he recovered his breath. His feet were then, he judged, at the level of the centre of the window which he had made his objective. And then he had to let go his hold again and drop another couple of feet down the side of the building, landing on his toes on the out-jutting sill and clutching at the window frame to recover his balance. He did so.

Then stooping a little, he was able to pull down the upper sash as quietly as it could be done, and climb down into the room.

There was no one there. He had not seriously expected that there would be, for the attention of the garrison would naturally be concentrated on the ways by which he might more ordinarily have been expected to attempt to enter. Certainly if there had been anyone in the room it would have meant the end of Simon Templar's useful career, for he could hardly have made any active resist­ance against being pushed off his unstable foothold into space. But there had been no one there to do it.

He crossed the room cautiously in the semidarkness, placing his feet with infinite precautions against making a noise which might be heard by anyone in a room below, and thus gained the door. The door was ajar. He opened it a little farther, slowly and with respect for its creaking hinges, and crept out onto the narrow landing.

The stairs faced him. He went down them like a