His back was towards her when she opened her eyes, but she saw the bulge of the gun in his coat pocket. She raised herself cautiously and put out her hand. Her fingers were actually sliding into his pocket when he turned and saw her.
“Not that either, you little devil!” he snarled.
He caught her wrist and wrenched it away from the gun she had almost succeeded in grasping.
“You’d like to shoot me, wouldn’t you?” he said thickly. “But you’re not going to have the chance. You’re going to love me. You’re going to love me in spite of everything—even if I am Waldstein!”
She shrank away from him with wide eyes.
“Yes, even if I am Waldstein,” he babbled. “Even if I did help to break your father. He was an officious nuisance. But you’re quite different. You’re going to settle with me in my way, Jill!”
2
There had been another man on the train to Birmingham, whom Simon Templar had not seen. He did not meet him until he had disembarked and was hailing a taxi, and, seeing him, the Saint was not pleased. But this was the kind of pleasure about which Simon Templar never let on, and it was the Assistant Commissioner who stared.
“Good Lord, Templar, how did you get here?”
“I came on a tricycle,” said the Saint gravely. “Did you use a motor-scooter?”
“I got your message—”
“What message?”
Cullis tugged at his moustache.
“Dyson rang up to say you were caught at Belgrave Street. He said he was to tell me that you wanted to be left there, and I was to come to Birmingham and take Donnell.”
The Saint looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is this another of the old Trelawney touches of humour?” he murmured. “I never sent you that message. What’s more, I’ll swear Dyson never sent it, either. He was never out of my sight from the time I was stuck up in Belgrave Street until a few seconds before I left. Someone’s been pulling your leg!”
He bent his eyes on the Commissioner’s nether limbs as if he really entertained a morbid hope that he would find one of them longer than the other.
Cullis pushed his hat back from his forehead.
“Just what’s the idea?”
“There’s some funny scheme behind it,” said the Saint, with the air of a man announcing an epoch-making discovery, “and we’ve yet to learn what it is. However, since you’re here, you can be of some use. Beetle round to the local police and make what arrangements you like. They can surround the block and be ready to take over Donnell when I bring him out. That’ll save me some time.”
“You’re going in alone?”
“I’m afraid I’ve got to go in alone,” said the Saint sadly. “You see, this is my nurse’s afternoon off…See you at a dairy later, old pomegranate.”
He tapped Cullis encouragingly in the stomach, climbed into the taxi, and closed the door leaving the Commissioner standing there with a blank look on his face.
He did not drive directly up to the mouth of the alley-way which admitted to the front door of Donnell’s fortress. That would have been too blatant even for Simon Templar. Besides, reckless as he might be, he did not believe in suicide, and the long, straight alley-way which he would have to traverse if he approached in the ordinary way would leave even the worst of marksmen very little chance of missing him. And the Saint had no interest in any funeral festivities in which he could not occupy a vertical position.
He drove instead to a tobacconist’s shop round the corner, and there he discharged the taxi. He went in and bought a packet of cigarettes, and then he showed his police identity card.
“Do you live in the rooms over here, or do they belong to someone else?”
“No sir. I live there.”
“I’ll go right up,” said the Saint. “Don’t bother to show me the way. You stay right here and carry on business as usual. I shan’t come back by this route, so don’t wait up late for me.”
He went through the shop and up the stairs.
From a window on the landing of the first floor he was able to survey the battle-ground.
It was unpromising. Donnell’s house formed, as has been explained, a kind of island site in the centre of the block, separated by a matter of about fourteen feet from the houses that surrounded it. The four pairs of walls which surrounded the square canyon thus formed were bare of any convenience for passing between them except solid ground at the bottom. And that was certain to be watched and covered from the windows of Donnell’s house. From the window where he looked out, Simon Templar might, if he had been that kind of lunatic, have considered the possibility of running a plank across to the window and entering the house that way. It is interesting to record that he was not that kind of lunatic—he had, amongst other weaknesses, a distinct urge towards being buried in one piece, when his time came.
There was, however, one other solution.
He went on up the stairs. On the third floor the stairs came to an end, but above his head were a trap-door and a swinging ladder. He pulled the ladder down and mounted it.
He found himself in a kind of attic, lumbered with boxes and odds and ends of broken furniture. It had one cobwebbed window, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through, but Simon squeezed through it and emerged on the leads. At that point, from where he stood with his heels in the gutter, leaning back against the tiles of the roof with a sixty-foot drop in front of him, the flat roof of Donnell’s house, with a high embrasured wall running round it and a kind of pent-house in the centre, was about six feet below him, and still fourteen feet away. But it was in the convenient position of not being overlooked by any of the windows from which the attack was likely to be watched for.
The Saint bent his knees and braced himself. He tested the strength of the gutter, found it firm, and without further hesitation launched himself into space.
He cleared the wall and landed on the flat concrete of Donnell’s roof, stumbling forward and saving himself with his hands.
Then he picked himself up and released the safety-catch of his automatic.
He circumnavigated the pent-house warily. It was square and solidly built, with narrow barred windows, and had obviously been designed as a point of vantage from which any attempt to reach the house over the roofs could be repelled. On that occasion, however, the possibility seemed to have been overlooked, for no shots came from it to greet him.
He worked his way round it and came to a massive door faced with iron. There was no handle on the outside, and the Saint tried to open it without success.
He gave up the task after a few seconds, and went out and looked over the wall down the face of the building.
There was a window directly below him, about six feet down, at the point where he had chanced to look over. He climbed up on the wall and looked down at it, considering the lie of the land.
The wall was about five feet high. Lowering himself over it, he was able to rest his toes on a ledge about three inches wide which ran round the outside. Then he had to stoop quickly and allow himself to fall literally into space, catching at the ledge with his fingers as he did so. For one hair-raising second he had the awful sensation of hurtling downwards to certain death, but Simon Templar’s nerves were like ice, and he knew the strength of his hands. His hooked fingers on the ledge brought him up with a jerk at the full stretch of his arms, and he hung there for a few seconds while he recovered his breath. His feet were then, he judged, at the level of the centre of the window which he had made his objective. And then he had to let go his hold again and drop another couple of feet down the side of the building, landing on his toes on the out-jutting sill and clutching at the window-frame to recover his balance. He did so.
Then stooping a little, he was able to pull down the upper sash as quietly as it could be done, and climb down into the room.
There was no one there. He had not seriously expected that there would be, for the attention of the garrison would naturally be concentrated on the ways by which
he might more ordinarily have been expected to enter. Certainly if there had been anyone in the room it would have meant the end of Simon Templar’s useful career, for he could hardly have made any active resistance against being pushed off his unstable foothold into space. But there had been no one there to do it.
He crossed the room cautiously in the semi-darkness, placing his feet with infinite precautions against making a noise which might be heard by anyone in a room below, and thus gained the door. The door was ajar. He opened it a little farther, slowly and with respect for its creaking hinges, and crept onto the narrow landing.
The stairs faced him. He went down them like a cat, keeping close to the wall, where he would be least likely to make a loose board creek. In that way he came down onto the second floor, and there the choice of four doors was open to him. He selected one at random, turned the knob silently, and entered with a rush that was swift and sudden without being noisy.
There was no one there. He saw that in his first lightning glance round. Then, reassured upon that point, his interest was taken by the sight of the open cupboard that seemed to lead through on to a lighted flight of stairs.
This was not quite what he had expected—he had not credited Donnell with the provision of any such melodramatic devices as concealed doors and secret passages. And the look of things seemed to indicate that someone had recently passed that way in such a hurry that he had forgotten to disguise his retreat by closing the cupboard doors behind him.
The Saint went quickly through to the hidden stairway, his gun in his hand.
He listened there and heard nothing. And then he went down into the darkness, and came at length upon the tunnel which Weald had found.
He could see no one ahead, and his steps quickened. Presently he came to the fork at which Weald had hesitated. As he paused there irresolute, his eye fell on something that sparkled on the stone flags. He bent and picked it up. It was a small drop ear-ring.
And he was putting it in his pocket when he heard a muffled cry come faintly down the branch on his right. The Saint broke into a run.
Stephen Weald, with his back to the door, and so intent upon the object of his madness that he could notice nothing else, did not hear the Saint’s entrance, and indeed, he knew nothing whatever of the Saint’s arrival until two steely hands took him by the scruff of the neck and literally bounced him off his feet.
Then he turned and saw the Saint, and his right hand dived for his pocket. But Simon was much too quick. His fist crashed up under Weald’s jaw, and dropped him in his tracks.
He turned to find the girl beside him.
“Did you hear what he said—that he was Waldstein?”
The Saint nodded.
“I did,” he said, and bent and seized Weald by the collar and jerked him half-upright. Then he got his arms under the man’s limp body, and hoisted him up in a lump, as he might have picked up a child.
“Where are you going?”
The girl’s voice checked him on his way to the door, and Simon glanced back over his shoulder.
“I’m going to collect Donnell and fill the party,” he said. “We policemen have our jobs to hold down. D’you mind?”
Then he went on his way. He seemed totally unconscious of having performed any personal service for the girl, and he utterly ignored the sequel to the situation into which a hackneyed convention might pardonably have lured any other man. That sublimely bland indifference would have been as good as a blow between the eyes to anyone but Jill Trelawney. He went on up the stairs carrying Weald. He heard the girl following him, but she did not speak, and Simon appeared to take no notice of her presence.
And thus he stepped through the open cupboard, and found Harry Donnell waiting for him on the other side of a Colt.
Simon stood quite still.
Then—
“It’s all right, Donnell,” spoke the girl, “I’ve got him covered.”
She was standing behind the Saint, so that Simon and his burden practically hid her. Donnell could not see the gun with which she was supposed to be covering the Saint, for her hand was behind Simon’s back, but Donnell believed, and lowered his own gun.
The Saint felt only the gentle and significant pressure of the girl’s open hand in the small of his back, and understood.
“Go on,” said Jill Trelawney.
Simon advanced obediently.
The movement brought him right up to Harry Donnell, who stood with his revolver lowered to the full length of a loose arm. There was only the width of Weald’s body between them.
Simon relaxed his hold suddenly and dropped Weald unceremoniously on to the floor, and then he hit Donnell accurately on the point of the jaw.
Donnell went down, and the Saint was on him in a flash, wrenching the revolver out of his hand.
And then, as the Saint rose again, he laughed—a laugh of sheer delight.
“You know, Jill, the only real trouble about this game of ours is that it’s too darned easy,” he said, and there was a new note in his voice which she had never heard before, that made her look at him in a strange puzzlement and surprise.
3
But still for a moment the Saint seemed egotistically oblivious to every angle on the situation except his own. The gun he had taken covered Harry Donnell, who was crawling dazedly up to his feet, and the Saint had backed away to the table and was propping himself against it. His cigarette-case clicked open, and a cigarette flicked into his mouth; his lighter flared, and a cloud of smoke drifted up through the gloom; he had his own private satisfaction. And Jill Trelawney said, “I suppose I ought to thank you…”
The Saint tilted his head.
“Why?” he inquired blankly.
“You know why.”
Simon shrugged—an elaborate shrug.
“I hope it will be a lesson to you,” he said solemnly. “You must be more careful about the company you keep. Oh, and thanks for helping me to get Harry,” said the Saint incidentally. “What made you do that?”
She looked at him.
“I thought it might go a little way towards settling the debt.”
“So that we could start fighting again—all square?…Yes, I should think we can call it quits.”
“I suppose you’d like to take my gun?”
“Please.”
She was fumbling in her bag, and the Saint was not watching her. He was smoking his cigarette and beaming with an infuriating smugness at Harry Donnell. About two seconds ago, his own weird intuition had raised an eyelid and wrinkled a thin hairline of clairvoyant light across his brain, and he knew exactly what was going to happen. There was just one little thing left that had to happen before the adventure took the twist that it had always been destined to take. And the Saint was not bothered about it at all, for he had his immoral views on these matters of private business.
He had taken no further notice of Weald since he dropped him on the floor. He had not even troubled to search Weald’s pockets. And when he turned his head at the sound of a shot, he saw the automatic half out of Weald’s pocket, and the man lying still, and turned again to smile at another gun.
“Don’t move,” said Jill Trelawney quietly, and the Saint shook his head.
“Jill, you really mustn’t commit murder in the presence of respectable policemen. If it happens again—”
“Never mind that,” said the girl curtly.
“Oh, but I do,” said the Saint. “May I smoke, or would you prefer to dance?”
The girl leaned against the wall, one hand on her hip, and the shining little nickelled automatic in the other.
“Your nerves are good, Simon Templar,” she remarked, coolly.
“I can say the same for yours.”
She regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
“I suppose,” she said, “it wouldn’t be any use pleading that I shot Weald to save trouble? You can see that he was drawing when I fired. And saving the life of a valuable detective…Would it be any use?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” answered the Saint, in the same tone. “You see, I’ve got a gun myself, and there wasn’t really any call for you to butt in. You just had to say ‘Oi!’—and I would have done the work. Besides, Harry would just love to be a witness for the Crown—wouldn’t you, Harry?”
He saw the venomous darkening of Donnell’s eyes, and laughed.
“I’m sure you would, Harry—being the four-flushing skunk you are.”
He had not moved from the table, and his right hand, holding Donnell’s revolver, still rested loosely on his knee.
“You aren’t going to be troublesome, Templar?” asked the girl gently, and Simon shrugged.
“You don’t get me, Jill. Personally, I’m never troublesome.” He held her eyes. “Others may be,” he said.
The silence after he spoke was significant, and the girl listened on. And she also heard, outside, the sound of heavy hurrying footsteps on the stairs.
“Excuse me,” said the Saint.
He stepped quickly to the door, and turned the key in the lock. Then he picked the table up and jammed it into the defence for ballast, with one edge under the handle of the door and the other slanting into the floor.
“That’ll hold Donnell’s boys for three or four minutes,” he said.
She smiled.
“While I slip out through the tunnel?”
“While we slip out through the tunnel.”
He saw the perplexity that narrowed her eyes, the hesitant parting of her lips, but he saw these things only in a sidelong glimpse as he crossed to the side of Harry Donnell. And he saw the vindictive resignation that twisted Donnell’s mouth, and laughed.
“Sorry to trouble you again,” said the Saint.
His fist shot up like the hoof of a plunging cayuse. But this time the Saint had had one essential fraction of a second more in which to meditate his maneuver—and that made all the difference in the world. And this time Donnell went down and stayed down in a peaceful sleep.
“Which is O.K.,” drawled the Saint, after one professional glance at the sleeper.
He turned briskly.
“Are you all set for the fade-away, Jill? Want to powder your nose or anything first?”
The Saint Meets his Match (The Saint Series) Page 8
