He carried in his mind a vivid recollection of tawny golden eyes darkened with anger, of a golden head tilted in inimitable defiance, of an implacable hatred flaming in as lovely a face as he had ever seen. Jill Trelawney. She should have been some palely savage Scandinavian goddess, he thought, riding before the Valkyries with her golden hair wild in the wind.
As it was, she rode before what it pleased his own sense of humour to call the "Lady's maids"—and that, he admitted, was a very practical substitute.
2
The first mention of the Angels of Doom had filtered through the underworld some four or five months previously. It was no more than a rumour, a whispered story passed from mouth to mouth, of the sort that an un-romantic Criminal Investigation Department is taught to take with many grains of salt. The mind of the criminal runs to nicknames; and "Angels of Doom" was a fairly typical specimen. It was also the one and only thing about Jill Trelawney which conformed to any of the precedents of crime known to New Scotland Yard.
There was a certain Ferdinand Dipper, well known to the police under a variety of names, who made much money by dancing. That is to say, certain strenuous middle-aged ladies paid him a quite reasonable fee for his services as a professional partner, and later found themselves paying him quite unreasonable fees for holding his tongue about the equivocal situations into which they had somehow been engineered. Dipper was clever, and his victims were foolish, and therefore for a long time the community had to surfer him in silence; but one day a woman less foolish than the rest repented of her folly the day after she had given Ferdinand an open check for two thousand pounds, and a detective tapped him on the shoulder as he put his foot on the gangway of the Maid of Thanet at Dover. They travelled back to London together by the next train; but the detective, who was human, accepted a cigarette from an exotically beautiful woman who entered their compartment to ask for a match. A porter woke him at Victoria, and a week later Ferdinand sent him a picture postcard and his love from Algeciras. And in due course information trickled in to headquarters through the devious channels by which such information ordinarily arrives.
"The Angels of Doom," said the information.
No crime is ever committed but every member of the underworld knows definitely who did it; but the task of the Criminal Investigation Department is not made any easier by the fact that six different sources of information will point with equal definiteness to six different persons. In this case, however, there was a certain amount of unanimity; but the C.I.D., who had never heard of the Angels of Doom before, shrugged their shoulders and wondered how Ferdinand had worked it.
Three weeks later, George Gallon, motor bandit, shot a policeman in Regent Street in the course of the getaway from a smash-and-grab raid at three o'clock of a stormy morning, and successfully disappeared. But about Gallon the police had certain information up their sleeves, and three armed men went cautiously to a little cottage on the Yorkshire moors to take him while he slept. The next day, a letter signed with the name of the Angels of Doom came to Scotland Yard and told a story, and the three men were found and released. But Gallon was not found; and the tale of the three men, that the room in which they found him must have been saturated with some odourless soporific gas, made the commissioner's lip curl. Nor was he amused when Gallon wrote later from some obscure South American republic to say that he was quite well, thanks.
More than three months passed, during which the name of the Angels of Doom grew more menacing every week, and so it came about that amongst the extensive and really rather prosaic and monotonous files of the Records Office at Scotland Yard there arrived one dossier of a totally different type from its companions. The outside cover was labelled in a commonplace manner enough, like all the other dossiers, with a simple name; and this name was Jill Trelawney. Inside, however, was to be found a very large section occupying nearly three hundred closely written pages, under a subheading which was anything but commonplace. Indeed, that subheading must have caused many searchings of heart to the staid member of the clerical department who had had to type it out, and must similarly have bothered the man responsible for the cross-indexing of the records, when he had had to print it neatly on one of his respectable little cards for the files. For that subheading was "The Angels of Doom," which Records Office must have felt was a heading far more suitable for inclusion in a library of sensational fiction than for a collection of data dealing solely with sober fact.
How Simon Templar came upon the scene was another matter—but really quite a simple one. For the Saint could never resist anything like that. He read of the early exploits of the Angels of Doom in the rare newspapers that he took the trouble to peruse, and was interested. Later, he heard further facts about Jill Trelawney from Chief Inspector Teal himself, and was even more interested. And the day came when he inveigled Chief Inspector Teal into accepting an invitation to lunch; and when the detective had been suitably mellowed by a menu selected with the Saint's infallible instinct for luxurious living, the Saint said, casually: "By the way, Claud Eustace, do you happen to remember that I was once invited to join the Special Branch?"
And Chief Inspector Teal removed the eight-inch cigar from his face and blinked—suspiciously.
"I remember," he said.
"And you remember my answer?"
"Not word for word, but——"
"I refused."
Teal nodded.
"I've thought, since, that perhaps that was one of the kindest things you ever did for me," he said.
The Saint smiled.
"Then I want you to take a deep breath and hold on to your socks, Claud Eustace, old okapi," he murmured, and the detective looked up.
"You want to try it?" .
Simon nodded.
"Just lately," he said, "I've been feeling an awful urge towards that little den of yours on the Embankment. I believe I was really born to be a policeman. As the scourge of ungodliness, I should be ten times more deadly with an official position. And there's one particular case on hand at the moment which is only waiting for a bloke like me to knock the hell out of it. Teal, wouldn't you like to call me 'Sir'?"
"I should hate it," said Teal.
But there were others in Scotland Yard who thought differently.
For it had long since been agreed, among the heads of that gloomy organization of salaried kill-joys which exists for the purposes of causing traffic jams, suppressing riotous living and friendly wassail, and discouraging the noble sport of soaking the ungodly on the boko, that something had got to be done about the Saint. The only point which up to that time had never been quite unanimously agreed on was what exactly was to be done.
The days had been when, to quote one flippant commentary, Chief Inspector Teal would have given ten years' salary for the privilege of leading the Saint gently by the arm into the nearest police station, and a number of gentlemen in the underworld would have given ten years' liberty for the pleasure of transporting the Saint to the top of the chute of a blast furnace and quietly back-heeling him into the stew. These things may be read in other volumes of the Saint Saga. But somehow the Saint had continued to go his pleasantly piratical way unscathed, to the rage and terror of the underworld and the despair of Chief Inspector Teal—buccaneer in the suits of Savile Row, amused, cool, debonair, with hell-for-leather blue eyes and a Saintly smile. . . .
And then, all at once, as it seemed, he had finished his work, and that should 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 commissione
r; 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. Stephen Weald felt cautious.
"Mr. Weald is a friend of mine," said the girl, "and I'd be obliged if you'd refrain from insulting him in my house."
"Anything to oblige," said the Saint affably. "I apologize."
And he contrived to make a second insult of the apology.
The girl had to call up all her resources of self-control to preserve an outward calm. Inwardly she felt all the fury that the Saint had aroused the night before boiling up afresh.
"I wonder," she said, with a strained evenness, "why nobody's ever murdered you, Simon Templar?"
"People have tried," the Saint said mildly. "It's never quite succeeded, somehow. But there's still hope."
He seemed to enjoy the thought. It was quite clear that his detestableness was no unfortunate trick of manner. It was too offensively deliberate. He had brought discourtesy in all its branches to a fine art, and he ladled out his masterpieces with no uncertain enthusiasm.
"How are the Angels this afternoon?" he inquired.
"They are"—she waved a vague hand—"here and there."
"Nice for them. May I sit down?"
"I think——"
"Thanks." He sat down. "But don't let me stop you thinking."
She took a cigarette from the box beside her and fitted it into a long amber holder. Weald applied a match.
"You forgot to ask me if I minded," said the Saint reproachfully. "Where are your manners, Jill?"
She turned in her chair—a movement far more abrupt than she meant it to be.
"If the police have to pester me," she said, "I should have appreciated their consideration if they'd sent a gentleman to do it."
"Sorry," said Simon. "Our gentlemen are all out pestering ladies. The chief thought I'd be good enough for you. Backchat. However, I'll pass on your complaint when I get back."
"If you get back."
"This afternoon," said the Saint. "And I shan't worry if he takes me off the job. Man-size criminals are my mark, and footling around with silly little girls like you is just squandering my unique qualities as a detective. More backchat."
Weald butted in, from the other side of the room:
"Jill, why do you waste time——"
"It amuses her," said the Saint. "When she's finished amusing herself, she'll tell us why my time's being wasted here at all. I didn't fall through a trapdoor in the hall, I wasn't electrocuted when I touched the banister rail, no mechanical gadget shot out of the wall and hit me over the head when I trod on the thirteenth stair. I wasn't shot by a spring gun on the way up. Where's your ingenuity?"
"Saint——"
"Of course, your father was English. Did you get your accent from him or from the talkies?"
He was enjoying himself. She was forced to the exasperating realization that he was playing with her, as if he were making a game of the encounter for his own secret satisfaction. At the least sign of resentment she gave, he registered the scoring of a point to himself as unmistakably as if he had chalked it up on a board.
"By the way," Simon said, "you really must stop annoying Essenden. He came in to see us the other day, and he was most upset. Remember that his nerves aren't as strong as mine. If you murdered him, for instance, I couldn't promise you that he wouldn't be really seriously annoyed."
"Whether I'm responsible for any shocks that Essenden's had, or not," said the girl calmly, "is still waiting to be proved."
"I don't expect it will wait very long," said the Saint comfortably. "You amateur crooks are never very clever."
Jill Trelawney took from her bag a tiny mirror and a gold-cased lipstick. She attended to the shaping of her mouth unconcernedly.
"Templar, you gave me your word of honour you would come alone to-day."
"Fancy that! And did you believe it?"
"I was prepared to."
"Child," said the Saint, "you amaze me."
He stood up and walked to the window in long jerky strides.
From there he beckoned her, looking down to the street from behind the curtains.
"Come here."
She came, after a pause, with a bored languidness; but it was impossible to make him show the least impatience.
"See there!"
He pointed down with a challenging forefinger.
"See and hear that man singing 'Rose in the Bud' at the harmonium? He's just waiting for me to come out and tell him he can go home. And you see the man farther up with the ice-cream cart? He's standing by. And the man selling newspapers on this side? More of the posse. You credited me with the darn thing, so I thought I'd live up to it. There's ten of 'em spread around this block now!"
"I'm sorry. I thought even your word of honour might be worth something. But now——"
"You'll know better next time, won't you?" Little flinty jags of amusement twinkled in his eyes. "What was the joke I was supposed to buy? Pinky Budd waiting downstairs in the hall with a handful of Angels? Or just a button you press up here that starts off the trapdoor and the electric banister rail and the mechanical gadget in the thirteenth stair?"
She faced him, flaming now without the slightest attempt at concealment, suddenly transformed into a beautiful tigress.
"You think you're clever—Saint!"
"I'm darn sure of it," murmured the Saint, modestly.
"You think——"
"Often and brilliantly. I kicked up the rug before I stepped on it, and saw the edge of the trap. I'm always suspicious of iron banister rails on indoor staircases. And the thirteenth stair gave an inch under my weight, so I ducked. But not
hing happened. Rather lucky for you the things weren't working—in the circumstances—isn't it?"
It was bewildering to think that the girl, according to official records, was only twenty-two. Simon Templar treated her like a petulant child because it pleased him to do so. But in that moment he recognized her anger as a grown reality with nothing childish in it. That he chose to keep the recognition to himself was nobody's business.
"No one will stop you going back to your posse, Templar."
"I didn't think anyone would."
He glanced at his watch.
"They'll be expecting me in another five minutes. I only came because I didn't want to disappoint you—and because I thought you might have something interesting to say."
"I've nothing more to—say."
"But lots of things to do?"
"Possibly."
That extraordinarily mocking smile bared his teeth.
"If only," he murmured softly—"if only your father could hear those sweet words fall from your gentle lips!"
"You'll leave my father out of it——"
"You'd like me to, wouldn't you? But that won't make me do it."
There was a renewed hardness in her eyes that had no right to be there.
"My father was framed," she said in a low voice.
"There was a proper inquiry. An assistant commissioner of police isn't dismissed in disgrace for nothing. And is that an excuse for anything you do, anyway?"
"It satisfies me."
Her voice held a depth of passion that for a moment turned even Simon Templar into a sober listener. She had never flinched from his sardonically bantering stare, and now she met it more defiantly than ever. She went on, in that low, passionate voice: "The shock killed him. You know it could have been nothing else but that. And he died denying the charge——"
"So you think you've a right to take vengeance on the department for him?"
"They condemned him for a thing he'd never done. And the mud sticks to me as well, still, a year after his death. So I'll give them something to condemn me for."
The Saint looked at her.
"And what about that boy over in the States?" he asked quietly, and saw her start.
The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady) Page 2
