Saint Steps In by Leslie Charteris Page B

himself a guest room opposite, with a door directly
fac ing hers across the corridor. He opened
his own bag before he came down again
and fixed drinks for both of them. Into her drink he put a couple of drops from a phial that he brought down with him.
    Very quickly the hot bright strain went out of her eyes, and she began
yawning. In a little while she was fast asleep. He carried her upstairs and put her in her bed, and then
he went across to his own room
and took off most of his clothes and lay down on the bed with his automatic tucked under the
edge of the mattress close to
his right hand, and switched off the lights. He didn’t think it was at all likely that the
Ungodly could get around to organising
another routine so soon, but he
always preferred to overrate the opposition rather than underrate them. He was awake for a
long time; and when he finally let himself sink into a light doze the first pallor of dawn was creeping into the room, and he knew
that he had been wrong about the bush-league skullduggery and that Calvin Gray was not coming home unless
somebody fetched him.

     
    3. How Madeline Gray was Persuaded to Eat,
    and Mr. Angert gave it Up.
     
     
    It was half-past
eight when Simon Templar woke up. He lay in bed
for a few minutes, watching fleecy white clouds drift across the blue sky outside the windows, and reviving the
thoughts on which he had fallen
asleep. They didn’t look any different now.
    He got up and put on a robe and went out into the corridor. It was nothing but a kind of last-ditch
wishfulness that made him
go quietly into Calvin Gray’s bedroom. But the bed hadn’t been slept in, and the room was exactly as he
had last seen it. He knew all the
time that it would be like that, of course. If
Calvin Gray had come home with the milkman, the Saint was sure that he would have heard him—he. had been alert all night, even in his sleep, for much
stealthier sounds than that would have been. But at least, he reflected
wryly, he had forestalled a self-made charge
of jumping to conclusions.
    He went back to his own room, shaved, showered, and dressed, and went downstairs.
    The table was laid with one place for breakfast in the din ing room, and there were sounds of
movement in the kitchen.
    Simon pushed
through the swing door, and stopped. A rosy- cheeked
young woman with dark curly hair and an apron looked up at him with
slightly startled eyes as he came in. She was small and nicely plump, in a way
that would obviously be come stout and
matronly exactly when you would expect.
    “Hullo,”
he said pleasantly. “Don’t be scared. My name’s Templar, and I came up from Washington with Miss Gray last
night.”
    “Oh,”
she said. “I’m Mrs. Cook. I just work here. You did scare me for a minute, though.”
    He realised that
since they had failed to talk to Calvin Gray there
was no reason for anyone to expect them there. In fact, no one knew of their
movement except Hamilton and the taxi driver
who had brought them in from the airport. The driver might or might not talk or think anything of it.
But at least it would take the Ungodly
a little while to pick up the scent, which
would be no disadvantage.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “What are the chances for
breakfast?”
    “I’ll set some more places.”
    “Miss Gray
was pretty tired out last night. I’m hoping she’ll sleep late.”
    “The
Professor’s usually up before this,” she said. “He must have been
working late.”
    The
Saint had a friendly and engaging ease, whenever he wanted to use it, which made it seem the most natural
thing in the world for anyone to keep on talking to him. He used that effortless receptiveness now, as a
happy substitute for more tiresome and
elaborate methods.
    He said quite
conversationally: “The Professor wasn’t in last night.”
    “Wasn’t he?
He’s nearly always in.”
    “We tried to
phone him from Washington to say we were on our
way, but the number didn’t answer.”
    “Was that very
late? I