The Saint Meets his Match (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Weald’s sallow face went a shade paler, but he did not answer at once. The Saint’s mocking gaze shifted to Budd.

  “Been doing any more fighting lately, Pinky? I heard that some tough guy beat up a couple of little boys in Shoreditch the other night, and I thought of you at once.”

  Pinky’s fists clenched.

  “If you’re looking for trouble, Templar,” he said pinkly, “I’m waiting for you, see?”

  “I know that,” said the Saint offensively. “I could hear you breathing as I came up the stairs.”

  He heard the door close behind him, and turned to face the girl again.

  It was a careless move, but he had not been expecting the hostilities to be reopened quite so quickly. The fact that the mere presence of his own charming personality might be considered by anyone else as a hostile movement in itself had escaped him. In these circumstances there is, by convention, a certain amount of warbling and woofling before any active unpleasantness is displayed. Simon Templar had always found this so—it took a certain amount of time for his enemies to get over the confident effrontery of his own bearing, and, in these days, their ingrained respect for the law which he was temporarily representing, before they nerved themselves to action. But this was not his first visit to Belgrave Street, nor their first sight of him, and they might have been expected to show enough intelligence to fortify themselves against his coming beforehand. Simon, however, had not expected it. It was the first slip he had made with the Angels of Doom.

  He felt the sharp pressure in his back, and knew what it was without having to turn and look. Even then he did not turn.

  Without batting an eyelid he said what he had come to say, exactly as if he had noticed nothing amiss whatever.

  “I’ve still some more news to give you, Jill.”

  There was a certain mockery in the eyes that returned his gaze.

  “Do you still want to give it?”

  “Why, yes,” said the Saint innocently. “Why not?”

  Weald spoke behind him.

  “We’re listening, Templar. Don’t move too suddenly, because I might think you were going to put up a fight.”

  The Saint turned slowly and glanced down at the gun in Weald’s hand.

  “Oh, that! Wonderful how science helps you boys all along the line. And a silencer, too. Do you know, I always thought those things were only used in stories written for little boys?”

  “It’s good enough for me.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be too good for you,” said the Saint. “Except, perhaps, a really mutinous sewer.” Then he turned round again. “Do you know a man named Donnell, Jill?”

  “Very well.”

  “Then you’d better ring him up and tell him goodbye. He’s going to Dartmoor for a long holiday, and he mightn’t remember you when he comes out.”

  She laughed.

  “The police in Birmingham have been saying things like that about Harry Donnell for the last two years, and they’ve never taken him.”

  “Possibly,” said the Saint in his modest way. “But this time the police of Birmingham aren’t concerned.”

  “Then who’s going to take him?”

  Simon smoothed his hair.

  “I am.”

  Pinky Budd chuckled throatily.

  “Not ’arf you ain’t!”

  “Not ’arf, I ain’t,” agreed the Saint courteously.

  “May I ask,” said the girl, “how you think you’re going to Birmingham?”

  “By train.”

  “After you leave here?”

  “After I leave here.”

  “D’you think you’re leaving?” interjected Weald.

  “I’m sure of it,” said the Saint calmly. “Slinky Dyson will let me out. He’s an old friend of mine.”

  The girl opened the door. Dyson was outside.

  “Here’s your friend the Saint,” she said.

  “Hullo, Slinky,” said the Saint. “How’s the eye?”

  Dyson slouched into the room.

  “Search him,” ordered Weald.

  Dyson obeyed, doing the job with ungentle hands. Simon made no resistance. In the circumstances that would only have been a mediocre way of committing suicide.

  “How true you run to type, Jill!” he murmured. “This is just what I was expecting. And now, of course, you’ll tell me that I’m going to be kept here as your prisoner until you choose to let me go. Or are you going to lock me in the cellar and leave the hose running? That was tried once. Or perhaps you’re going to ask me to join your gang—that’d be quite original.”

  “Sit down,” snapped Weald.

  Simon sat down as if he had been meaning to do so all the time.

  Jill Trelawney was at the telephone. The Saint observed her out of the corner of his eye while he selected and lighted a cigarette from his case. He waited quite patiently while she tried to make the call, but he feigned surprise when she failed.

  “That really upsets me,” he said. “Now you’ll have to go to Birmingham yourself. I hate to think I’m putting you to so much inconvenience.”

  He saw Budd busying himself with some loose rope, and when the ex-prize-fighter came over with the obvious intention of binding him, the Saint put his hands behind him without being told to. Weald was talking to the girl.

  “Do you really mean to go to Birmingham?”

  “Yes. It’s the only thing to do. I can’t get in touch with Donnell by telephone, and it wouldn’t be safe to send a wire.”

  “And suppose it’s a trap?”

  “You can suppose it’s what you like. The Saint’s clever. But I think I’ve got the hang of him now. It’s just a repetition of that posse joke. He’s come to tell us that he’s going to get Donnell just because he thinks we won’t believe it. And if he does get Donnell, Donnell will squeal. If you’ve got cold feet you can stay here. But I’m going. Budd can go with me if you don’t like it. He’ll be more use than you, anyway.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  She came back to watch Budd putting the finishing touches to the Saint’s roping.

  “You’ll be pleased to hear,” she said, “that for once I’m going to believe you.”

  “So I heard,” said the Saint. “Hope you have a nice journey. Will you leave Dyson to look after me? I’m sure he’d treat me very kindly.”

  She shook her head.

  “Budd,” she said, “will be even kinder.”

  It was a blow at the very foundations of the scheme which the Saint had built up, but not a muscle of his face betrayed his feelings.

  He spoke to her as if there were no one else in the room, holding her eyes in spite of herself with that mocking stare of his.

  “Jill Trelawney,” he said, “you’re a fool. If there were degrees in pure, undiluted imbecility I should give you first prize. You’re going to Birmingham with Weald. When you get there you’re going to walk into a pile of trouble. Weald will be as much use to you as a tin tombstone. Not that the thought worries me, but I’m just telling you now, and I’d like you to remember it afterwards. Before tonight you’re going to wish you’d been born with some sort of imitation of a brain. That’s all. I shall see you again in Birmingham—don’t worry.”

  She smiled, with a lift of her eyebrows.

  “Aren’t you thoughtful for me, Simon Templar?”

  “We don’t mind doing these things for old customers,” said the Saint benignly.

  He was still looking at her. The bantering gaze of his blue eyes from under the lazily drooping eyelids, the faint smile, the hint of a lilt of laughter in his voice—these things could rarely have been more airily perfect in their mockery.

  “And while you’re on your way,” said the Saint, “you might have time to remember that I never asked you to become a customer. You’re making the most blind paralytic fool of yourself that ever a woman made of anything that God had given her such a long start on! But that’s your
own idea, isn’t it? Now go ahead and prove it’s right. Go to Birmingham, take that diseased blot of a Stephen Weald with you—”

  Weald stepped forward.

  “What did you say, Templar?”

  “I said ‘diseased blot of a Stephen Weald,’ ” said the Saint pleasantly. “Any objection?”

  “I have,” said Weald. “This—”

  He struck the Saint three times in the face with his fist.

  “…and this—for the first time I met you.”

  Simon sat like a rock.

  “You’ve found some courage since then,” he remarked, in a voice of steel and granite. “Been taking pink pills or something?”

  Then the girl stepped between them.

  “That’ll do,” she said curtly. “Weald, go and get your coat. Pinky, you and Dyson can carry Templar downstairs.”

  “So it’s to be the cellar and the hose-pipe, is it?” drawled the Saint, unimpressed.

  “Just the cellar, for the present,” she answered coolly. “I’ll decide what else is to be done with you when I come back.”

  “If—if you come back,” said the Saint indulgently.

  2

  Simon lay in the cellar where he had been carelessly dropped, and meditated his position by the light of the single dusty globe which provided the sole illumination in the place. Having dropped him there, Budd and Dyson departed, but the hope that they might have gone for good, thereby leaving him to try all the tricks of escape he knew upon the ropes with which he had been tied, was soon dispelled. They returned in a few moments, Budd carrying a table and Dyson a couple of chairs. Then they closed the door and sat down.

  Clearly, the watch was intended to be a close one. Budd took a pack of greasy cards from his pocket, and the two men settled down to a game.

  Cautiously, as well as he could without attracting attention, the Saint tested his bonds. The process did not take him long. His expert tests soon proved that the roping had been done by a practised hand. It remained, therefore, to depend on the loyalty of Slinky Dyson. And how much was that worth? In an interval in the game he caught Dyson’s eye. Slinky’s expression did not change, but Simon found something reassuring in that unpromising fact.

  For a quarter of an hour the game continued, and then Slinky wiped his mouth with a soiled handkerchief.

  “This is a thirsty job,” he complained.

  “Ain’t it?” agreed Budd. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Not ’arf. Is there anything?”

  Budd nodded.

  “I’ll see if I can find something. You keep your eyes skinned for Templar, see?”

  “You bet I will.”

  Budd rose and went out, leaving the door open, and Simon listened without speaking as the sound of the man’s heavy footsteps faded up the stairs.

  A moment later he found Dyson beside him.

  “I don’t want to hustle you,” said the Saint easily, “but if you’ve nothing else to do at the moment—”

  Dyson swallowed.

  “If Budd comes back and catches me at this I’m a goner,” he said.

  He had opened a murderous-looking jack-knife, and Simon felt the ropes loosen about his arms and legs as Dyson slashed clumsily at them. Then, beyond the sound of Dyson’s laboured breathing, he heard Budd coming back. Slinky gave a little grunt of panic.

  “You’ll see I’m all right, Mr Templar, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” said the Saint.

  He stood up and swiftly untwisted the loose cords that held him and dropped them on the floor.

  Pinky Budd saw him standing up free beside the table, and very carefully he put down the tray he was carrying.

  “So that’s the idea!” breathed Budd.

  “It is,” said the Saint gently. “And now we’re going to have a fight, aren’t we?”

  Dyson was still holding the murderous jack-knife, but the Saint pushed him smoothly aside.

  “You can put that away,” he said. “This is a vegetarian party. Fairly vegetarian, anyway, I’m going to give Pinky beans, and—Oh, don’t go yet, Pinky!”

  Budd had made a dive for the door. The key was still in the lock, and if he had brought off the maneuver he might have been able to get outside and lock the door behind him. But the Saint was a shade quicker. The table was between him and Budd, but he hurled it aside as if it had been made of cardboard, and caught Budd’s hand as it went to the lock.

  Budd dropped the key with a scream of pain. He tried to kick, but Simon dodged neatly.

  Then he pushed Budd away so that the man went reeling across the room, and the Saint picked up the key and put it in his trouser pocket. Then he slipped off his coat.

  “And now, Pinky Budd, we have this fight, don’t we?”

  But Budd was coming on without any encouragement. He was on his toes, too. The fighting game had not dealt lightly with Pinky’s face, but he had all the science and experience that he had won at the cost of his disfigurements.

  He led off with a sledge-hammer left that would have ended the fight then and there if it had connected. But it did not connect.

  Simon ducked and landed a left-right beat to the body that made Budd grunt. Then the Saint was away again, sparring, and he also was on his toes.

  Moreover, he was between Budd and the door, and he meant to stay there. Budd had asked for the fight, and he was going to get it. Budd might have been glad of the chance, or he might have wanted to get out of it, but he wasn’t having the choice, anyway. Simon Templar was seeing to that. But to a certain extent that tactical necessity of keeping between Budd and the door was going to cramp his style. He appreciated the disadvantage in a fight which wasn’t going to be an easy fight at any moment. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Budd’s next lead was another left, but it was a feint. The Saint divined that and changed his guard. But he was a little slow in divining that the right cross which came over after the left was a second feint, and the half-arm jolt to the short ribs which followed it caught him unprepared and drove him back gasping against the wall.

  Budd came in like a tiger, left and right, and Simon dropped to one knee.

  He straightened up with a racking upper-cut that must have ricked Budd’s neck as though a horse had kicked him under the chin. That blow would have been the end of the average man for some time to come. But Budd had been trained in a tougher school. He fell into a clinch that the Saint, still rib-bound from the smashing blow he had taken, was not quick enough to avoid. There Budd’s weight told. There was no referee to give them the breakaway, and the professional was free to use every dirty trick of holding and heading and heeling for which a clinch gives openings. But the Saint also knew a few of those himself, and he broke the clinch eventually with a blow that would certainly have got him disqualified in any official contest. As he stepped out he swung up a pendulum left which should have caught Budd under the jaw. Pinky got his head back quickly enough, but not quite far enough, and the blow snicked up his nose.

  It maddened him, but it also blinded him. No man, however tough, can have his nose snicked up in that particular way without having his vision momentarily fogged. And before Budd could see what was happening the Saint had sent in a pile-driving right-hander to the heart. Then he turned on his toes and followed through with a left to the solar plexus that had every ounce of his weight behind it, and Budd went smashing down as if a steam-hammer had hit him.

  Simon picked up his coat.

  “We ought to be just in time to get that train, Slinky,” he remarked, and then he turned round to find that Slinky Dyson had already gone.

  With a shrug the Saint went out, locking the door behind him.

  A taxi took him to Paddington, and he arrived outside the platform barrier just as the guard was blowing his whistle.

  He had no ticket, but such minor difficulties were never allowed to stand in Simon Templar’s way. Nor was the ticket collector, Simon picked him up and sat him on a convenient luggage trolley, and raced down the pla
tform as the train was gathering way. He opened the door of the first convenient carriage and swung into it. Looking back through the window, he saw the chase of porters tailing off breathlessly. They might telephone to Birmingham and prepare a reception for him there, but that would not take long to deal with.

  Then he turned to inspect the other occupants of the carriage, whose flabbergasted comments had been audible behind him as he looked back out of the window, but the first person he noticed was not a man in the carriage. It was a man who happened to be passing down the corridor.

  The Saint strode over a barricade of legs, odd luggage, and a bird cage, and went down the corridor in the man’s wake. Coming up sufficiently close behind him, he trod heavily on the man’s heels, and Stephen Weald turned with an oath.

  “What the—”

  The exclamation died suddenly, and Weald’s face went grey as he recognised the offender.

  Simon’s lips twitched into a little smile of sprightly merriment.

  “So we’re all going to Birmingham together!”

  Then, with a surprising abruptness, he turned away into the nearest carriage, where he had already perceived a vacant seat, and composed himself to the enjoyment of a cigarette.

  Weald passed on.

  A little farther down the corridor was the compartment in which he and the girl had found places. She looked up as he showed in the doorway, and he gave her an imperceptible signal. She came out to join him in the corridor.

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s go to the dining-car,” said Weald, “we shan’t be overheard there.”

  He led the way, and no more was said until they were securely ensconced and tea had been ordered.

  “Well, what is it, Weald?”

  “The Saint’s on the train! I’ve just seen him.”

  She stopped in the act of fitting a cigarette into a holder.

  “The Saint? You’re dreaming.”

  He shook his head. The hand with which he offered her a match was shaking.

  “I tell you I saw him. He spoke to me. He’s in a compartment three divisions back from ours. I don’t know how he got away, but he’s done it.”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed.