The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

saw—a hand holding a gun, waving wildly as Essenden fell.

In shallower water, Simon caught the hand and the gun, and twisted the gun right round so that it aimed into Essenden's own body.

'Now shoot!' gasped the Saint.

Essenden squinted at him.

'You're another meddler,' said Essenden, and tight­ened his finger on the trigger.

 

 

Chapter IX

HOW SIMON TEMPLAR KISSED JILL TRELAWNEY,

AND MR. TEAL WAS RUDE TO MR. CULLIS

 

ESSENDEN was gone. As his body went limp, the rising mill-race fury of the stream whipped him up and swept him away into the dark depths of the cave, further than the ineffectual light at the entrance could penetrate.

The water was coming up higher. It was thigh-deep now, and against its tearing speed it was difficult to stand upright. In fact, the Saint, with one useless leg, would probably never have escaped if it had not been for Jill Trelawney. When one would have thought that she needed all her own reserve of strength to escape her­self, she yet managed to find enough strength to spare to help the Saint along beside her. Stumbling and splash­ing desperately, often on the verge of falling where one false step would have meant certain death, they reached the end of the passage by which they had come.

There they found some sort of haven, with calmer waters lapping up to their waists. If they had been in the full force of the stream at that point they could scarcely have got out alive. As it was, it was hard enough to scale the precipitous slope at the end of the passage. Somehow they dragged themselves up, and lay gasping on the dry stone above the level of the water.

Minutes later, Jill pulled herself to her feet.

'Feeling better?' she asked.

'Miles,' said the Saint.

He pulled himself up after her; and they covered the rest of the passage together, Simon leaning some of his weight on an arm placed round her shoulders.

When they had reached the wine cellar, the girl locked the door through which they had come and carefully replaced the key on its nail.

The Saint's shoes and socks had been swept away by the tide in the cave. He limped into the library, and there, after comparing the size of his feet with those of the four tough guys, proceeded, without apology, to remove the footwear of Flash Arne and put it upon himself. The pattern of the socks offended his aesthetic princi­ples, and he would have preferred to ask for shoes of a less violently lemon colour, but a beggar could not be a chooser.

More or less comfortably shod, he stood up again.

'You boys,' he said, 'may stay here as long as you like. Make yourselves at home, and spend your spare time thinking out the story you're going to tell when the servants come back and find you here.'

The replies he received have no place in a highly moral and uplifting story like this.

He went out with Jill, and limped down the drive beside her.

'The water's got into my watch and stopped it,' he said, 'but we ought to be just about on