The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

have been that. 'The tumult and the shouting dies, the sinners and the Saints depart,' as the Saint himself so beautifully put it. All adventures come to an end. But Jill Trelawney . . .

'Jill Trelawney,' said the Saint dreamily, 'is a new interest. I tell you, Teal, I was going to take the longest holiday of my life. But since Jill Trelawney is still at large, and your bunch of flat-footed nit-wits hasn't been able to do anything about it ...'

And after considerable elaboration of his point, the Saint was permitted to say much the same thing to the commissioner; but this interview was briefer.

'You can try,' said the chief. 'There are some photo­graphs and her dossier. We pulled her in last week, after the Angels wrecked the raid on Harp's dope joint—'

'And she showed up with a copper-bottomed alibi you could have sailed through a Pacific hurricane,' drawled the Saint. 'Yeah?'

'Get her,' snapped the chief.

'Three weeks,' drawled the Saint laconically, and walked out of Scotland Yard warbling a verse of the comedy song hit of the season—written by himself.

'I

Am the guy

Who killed  Capone ——'

 

As he passed the startled doorkeeper, he got a superb yodelling effect into the end of that last line.

And that was exactly thirty-six hours before he met Jill Trelawney for the first time.

And precisely at three o'clock on the afternoon after he had first met her, Simon Templar walked down Belgrave Street, indisputably the most astonishingly immaculate and elegant policeman that ever walked down Belgrave Street, was admitted to No. 97, was shown up the stairs, walked into the drawing room. If possible, he was more dark and cavalier and impudent by daylight than he had been by night. Weald and the girl were there.

'Good-afternoon,' said the Saint.

His voice stoked the conventional greeting with an infinity of mocking arrogance. He was amused, in his cheerful way. He judged that the rankling thoughts of the intervening night and morning would not have improved their affection for him, and he was amused.

'Nice day,' he drawled.

'We hardly expected you,' said the girl.

'Your error,' said the Saint comfortably.

He tossed his hat into a chair and glanced back at the door which had just closed behind him.

'I don't like your line in butlers,' he said. 'I suppose you know that Frederick Wells has a very eccentric record. Aren't you afraid he might disappear with the silver?'

'Wells is an excellent servant.'

'Fine! And how's Pinky?'

'Budd is out at the moment. He'll be right back.'

'Fine again!' The mocking blue eyes absorbed Stephen Weald from the feet upwards. 'And what position does this freak hold in the establishment? Pantry boy?'

Weald gnawed his lip and said nothing. There was a cross of sticking plaster over the bruised cut in his chin to remind him that a man like Simon Templar is apt to confuse physical violence with abstract repartee.