The Saint Meets His Match by Leslie Charteris Page A

it over he discovered that he was in a dead
end—the tunnel did not go on, but stopped in the room
into which he had opened the door.
    There was a tattered
carpet on the floor, and a table and a chair on the
carpet. In one corner was a couch, in an other
were a pile of tinned foods and a beaker of water.
    He should have turned back
and tried the left-hand branch of the tunnel, but
he was not an athletic man, and the effort of carrying even such, a light
weight as the girl for that distance had taxed his
untrained muscles severely. He put her down on the
couch and straightened up, mop ping his streaming brow and breathing heavily.
    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 Birming ham, 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 displeasure 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. Some one’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 dis covery,
“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 fort ress. 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 alleyway which
he would have to traverse if he
approached in the ordinary way would
leave even the worst of marksmen very little chance of