The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

victim. However, here we are. . . .'

He was dusting his coat. It was really a very respectable coat, when he brushed off the shabbiness which he had applied with French chalk. The enormous boots, re­moved, disclosed a neat pair of shoes worn beneath them. The horribly striped socks were dummies, which he un­buttoned and put in his pocket. The red choker, removed also, proved that the impression it conveyed at first sight was false: he actually wore shirt, collar, and tie underneath it, and all three were quietly elegant. Before Essen-den's staring eyes, he slipped off the very purple cap and the eyeshade, wiped the blue make-up from his chin with his handkerchief, and so ceased to bear the slightest resemblance to Albert George.

'An ingenious device,' he said, 'to divide the enemy's camp. But not, to tell you the truth, original. None the less useful for that.'

'Did you have any trouble?' asked Jill. 'Not much. Just one rough man. He hit me once, which was tiresome, and he hit the wall once, which must have hurt him quite a lot. Otherwise, no damage was done. And the whole bunch went off to look for the car like four maggots in search of a green cheese.'

Essenden, standing back against the wall with Jill Trelawney's automatic centred unwaveringly on his waistcoat, knew fear. There was a gun in his own pocket, but he dared not reach for it. The girl had never taken her eyes off him for more than a fleeting second, and the ex­pression in those eyes told him that her finger was itching on the trigger.

He realized that he had been criminally careless. Even when he saw her outside the front door, he had not been alarmed—so insanely blinded had he been by the story of Albert George. He knew that his four guards would return in a few moments; he was sure also that, whatever she meant to do, she would not do it while he could con­vince her that so long as she held her hand she had the chance of getting the information his advertisement had offered; he had meant to play up that offer—it was his trump card for an emergency, and he had been convinced that as long as he held that card he could be in no real danger. But the unmasking of Albert George—the revela­tion that there was not only Jill Trelawney, but also Simon Templar, to cope with—that had upset Essenden's confident equilibrium.

There was something rather horrible about a shifting flicker of snapping nerves in the eyes of such a fussy and foolish-looking little man.

The grimly brilliant scheme that he had elaborated was toppling down like a house of cards. . . .

But Jill Trelawney only laughed.

'Now we have our talk, don't we?' she said; and Lord Essenden seemed to shiver—but that might have been due to nothing but the draught from the French windows which his guards had left ajar when they went out.

By the windows stood the Saint.

'The boys are coming back,' he said. 'This time, I think, a gun might save trouble.'

He stepped over to Essenden, lifted the automatic from Essenden's pocket, and retired to the cover of a bookcase which projected in such a way that it would hide him from the view of anyone entering by the windows.

'And if you'll just take Essenden for a walk,' he drawled, 'I'll give a yodel when the collection is complete. It's a bit late in the year, but you might find some mistletoe somewhere——'

'O.K., Big Boy.'

Simon watched Essenden removed; and leaned back against the wall with the peer's gun swinging lightly in his hand.

Voices spoke outside the windows. The voice of Red Harver, booming above the others, said: 'A plant, that's what it was——'

And the voice stopped short, on the threshold of the room, it seemed to Simon;