The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

'I don't see—'

'But I do!' She was sure now. 'Essenden, you'll come down to that cellar—with me!'

A muscle twitched in the shadow of Essenden's droop­ing moustache; and again the girl spoke.

'You don't want to go down there. Exactly. There's ' something down there which might be dangerous. . . . Oh, yes, I saw it in your face! And that's why we're go­ing.'

She opened the door.

'March!'

'I don't——'

Jill Trelawney's eyebrows lowered over her frosty stare.

'I said—March!'

Essenden opened his mouth, and closed it again. He went to the door.

'Get a move on.'

'It's your own funeral, if you insist on going down there.'

'I do insist. Get on!'

He obeyed. The door under the main staircase was open, and the light was on. Essenden led straight to it; and Jill followed, tensely alert for the faintest hint of treachery. They went down the flight of steps. The iron-barred door at the far end of the wine cellar had also been left open by the Saint in his passage.

They followed the tunnel, with Essenden moving slow­ly and hesitantly in the lead, hardly spurred on by the girl's tongue, and Jill Trelawney keyed up to a tingling wariness. But he went on without an attempt at active re­sistance, and scrambled in front of her down the last ten yards of steep furrowed slope. She descended after him, slowly, with infinite precautions against a false step that might have given him a chance to turn the tables.

'Where now?'

'This is the cave.'

He turned the angle of the passage, and she followed quickly.

But not quite quickly enough.        

He had played his card superbly—with such an inno­cent naturalness had he vanished for one instant from her sight. But when she herself rounded the corner, she could not see him.

Then he stepped out of a dark crevice in the rock be­side her, and grappled desperately.

He had a hold on her gun wrist before she could move. He was not really such a silly little man as the Saint had called him, and he was much too strong for her. His sud­den vicious wrench at her wrist took her unawares, and her automatic clattered down to the stone.

He pushed her roughly away and picked up the gun.

'Now look at my cave!'

She retreated before him. He had changed complete­ly. He was confident, cruel, bestial, transformed. He pointed.

'And Mr. Templar!'

She saw Simon Templar lay stretched out on the floor of the cavern. He was alive. She heard his breath come in a long tortured gasp. About his bare left ankle was locked a contrivance of shining steel, like a pair of skele­ton jaws at the end of a length of chain which vanished into the dark stream beside him.