The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

time.'

They were on time. As they reached the lodge gates the lights of a car came up the road.

Jill Trelawney had sent the chauffeur off to buy a bottle of brandy in a neighbouring village; and the probable time he would take on the errand—with necessary refreshment for himself en route—had been carefully cal­culated.

'And that bottle,' said the Saint, 'may easily turn out to be one of the greatest inspirations either of us has ever had—if you feel anything like as cold as I do.'

In the darkness, their drenched and draggled condition could escape notice. They climbed into the car, and Simon took delivery of the Courvoisier and directed the chauffeur.

'And so—the tumult and the shouting dies, the sinners and the Saints depart.'

The cork of the bottle popped under his expert manip­ulation, and the luxurious fittings of the car provided glasses. The liquor gurgled out in the dimness.

'An inferior poison, as compared to beer, but perhaps more warming,' he said.

They drank gratefully, and felt the cold recede from the radiant trickle of Three Star. And then the Saint gave her a cigarette and lighted one for himself.

'Where did you tell the chauffeur to drive?' she asked.

'Reading. We can go on to London from there in the morning: I don't want too many people to know all our movements. Teal found my Sloane Street address quickly enough, but it was never my best hidey-hole. I've got another little place in Chelsea that I'll swear he's never even dreamed about. You can make that your home, and I'll go back to Upper Berkeley Mews quite openly, just to annoy Claud Eustace. I might even ring him up and ask him to toddle over and chew some gum with me.'

He could see her face in the faint glow as she drew at her cigarette.

'I suppose the Saints have to depart?' she said.

He struck a match to see her better, and his eyebrows went up with the trickle of smoke exhaled.

'Why?'

She hesitated. Then—

'I thought you meant you were cutting out.'

'Jill, you should know me better than that!'

'But I never knew that this kind of thing was in your line.'

'The righting of injustice, the strafing of the ungodly, and the succouring of a damsel in distress? Oh, Jill! . . . Did you never hear of Galahad?'

'Ye-es.'

'My stage name,' said the Saint.

The match went out, and he leaned back on the cush­ions. His strength was sweeping back into him like a steady stream. He had already made certain that his ankle was not broken, and that was all that had really worried him. In a couple of days he would be prancing around like a puppy off the leash. He was almost satisfied.

'Of course,' he murmured, 'we have been criminally careless. We have been persistently bumping off the very birds who might have saved us a lot of trouble. I admit Essenden bumped himself off, but that was due to a misunderstanding. It's the principle of the thing. Jill, if we're going to vindicate Papa, we're going to have to be