The Saint Meets His Match (12 page)

Hampered by his burden, he
could only feel his way
down step by step. The
direct light above was soon lost,
and the stairs grew
darker and darker. He went on. Then
another light dawned
below, and grew more powerful as
he proceeded farther
downward; at last the bulb which
gave the light was on the
level of his eyes. He went down
beneath it, and presently
found himself on level stone.

A corridor stretched away
before him, lighted at long
intervals by electric
bulbs. He went on down it and felt
a faint breath of
fresh air on his face. Presently the tunnel
forked.
Donnell had not told him about that. He hesitat
ed,
and then plunged into the right-hand branch. In a few yards it took a turn, and
a door faced him. He got it open
and went into darkness.
Groping round, he found a
switch, and when he had
clicked 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 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 sensation
of
hurtling downwards to certain death; but Simon Tem
plar’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 attempt
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
resist
ance 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 semidarkness,
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 out 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 creak. In that way he came
down
to 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
light
ning glance round. Then, reassured
upon that point, his
interest was
taken by the sight of the open cupboard that
seemed to lead through to a lighted flight of stairs.