The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

ask for trouble?'

The Saint's eyebrows twitched blandly.

'I have no posse. I had a gang once, but it died. Didn't they tell you I was working alone?'

'If they had,' said the girl, 'I shouldn't believe them. You don't look the kind of man who can bluff without a dozen armed men behind him.'

He trembled with a gust of noiseless mirth.

'Quite right. I'm terrified, really!'

The mocking eyes glanced again from Budd to Weald, and back again to the girl. That maddening smile flick­ered again on the clean-cut lips with a glitter of perfect teeth.

'And are these two of the Lady's maids?'

'Suppose they are?' rapped the girl.

'What a dramatic ideal'

She discovered that the eyes could hold something even more infuriating than insolence, and that was a con­descending amusement. A little while before she had been treating Stephen Weald like a fractious child: now she was receiving the same treatment herself.

'I'm glad you like it,' she said sweetly.

'You're not,' said the Saint cheerfully. 'But let that pass. I came to give you a word of advice.'

'Thanks very much.'

'Not at all.'

He pointed with a long brown finger past the girl.

'There's a house up there,' he said. 'Don't pretend you don't know, because I should hate you to have to tell any unnecessary lies. It belongs to Lord Essenden. My advice to you is—don't go there.'

'Really?'

'They're holding a very good dance up at that house,' said the Saint sardonically. 'I should hate you to spoil it. All the wealth of the county is congregated together. If you could only have seen the jewels——'

She had opened her bag, and there was a white slip of pasteboard in her hand. She held it up so that he could see.

'I think this will admit me.'

'Let me see it.'

He had taken it from her fingers before she realized what he was doing. And yet he did not appear to have snatched it.

'Quite a good forgery,' he remarked—'if it is a forgery.

But I could believe you capable of engineering a real invitation, Jill.'

'It's quite genuine. And I want it back—please!'

Simon Templar looked down the muzzle of the auto­matic and seemed to see something humorous there.

He looked perfectly steadily into her eyes, and with per­fect deliberation he tore the card into sixteen pieces and let them trickle through his fingers to the floor of the car.