The Saint Meets His Match by Leslie Charteris Page B

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
battleground.
    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 the 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 a lunatic, have considered the
possibility of running a plank across to the window opposite 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 penthouse in the centre, was about six feet below him, and still fourteen feet away. But it was in the convenient position of not being
over looked by any of the windows
from which his 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
penthouse 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 possi bility 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 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, consider ing 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