The Saint Meets His Match (14 page)

She made no answer. In the
same bewildered silence
she found herself at the junction of the two
forks in the
tunnel; they took the left-hand
fork this time, and went
on for about
a hundred yards before the light of the last
electric bulb was lost
behind them and they found themselves in darkness. She heard the crackle of
the Saint’s lighter, and saw another flight of steps on the right.

“Up here.”

He took her arm and swung
her round the turning and up the stairs. At the top, what appeared to be a
blank wall faced them; the Saint’s lighter went out as
they reached it, and she heard him fumbling with some
thing in the
dark. Then a crack of light sprang into exist
ence
before her, widening rapidly, and she felt fresh air
on her face as the Saint’s figure silhouetted
itself in the
gap.

“Easy all,”
came the Saint’s imperturbable accents; and
she
followed him through the opening to find the assistant
commissioner
putting away his gun.

They had stepped into a
poorly furnished parlour;
besides Cullis there were
a couple of plain-clothes detec
tives and four uniformed
policemen crowded into it.

“The first
capture,” said the Saint, taking the girl’s
arm
again. “I laid out Donnell and Weald, but I couldn’t
bring them
along with me. You’ll find them in the house,
if
you get there quick enough—the rest of Donnell’s boys
were chipping bits out of the door when we
left.”

Cullis nodded; and the
uniformed men filed through
the opening in the wall.
The plain-clothes men hesi
tated, but the Saint
signalled them on.

“I’ll take Trelawney
myself—my share of this job is
over.”

As the detectives
disappeared, the Saint opened the
door and led Jill
Trelawney out into a small bare hall.
Cullis followed. Outside, a taxi was
waiting and Simon
pushed the girl in.

Then he turned back to the
commissioner.

“You might find it
entertaining to take a toddle up
that tunnel yourself,” he said. “There’s
something amus
ing in the room at the other
end which the boys should
be
discovering about now. Oh, and you might give my
love to Claud Eustace next time you see him. Tell him I
always was the greatest detective of you all—the
joke
should make him scream.”

Cullis nodded.

“Are you taking her
to the station?”

“I am,” said the
Saint truthfully, and closed the door.

And then the Saint settled
back and lighted another
cigarette as the taxi drew
away from the curb.

“We’ve just time to catch the next train
to town with
eighty seconds to spare,”
he remarked; and the girl turned to him with the nearest thing to a
straight-forward smile
that he had
seen on her lips yet.

“And after
that?”’

“I know a place near
London where the train slows
up to a walking pace. We can
step off there, and the
synthetic sleuths who will
be infesting Paddington by
the time the train gets in can wait for us as
long as they
like.”

She met his eyes
steadily.

“You mean that?”

“But of course!”
said the Saint. “And you can ask
me anything else
you want to know. This is the end of my career as a policeman. I never thought
the hell of a
lot of the job, anyhow. I suppose
you’re wondering why?”

She nodded.

“I suppose I
am.”

“Well, I butted into
this party more or less by way of
a joke. A joke and a promise, Jill,
which I may tell you
about one day. Or
maybe I won’t. Whether you were right
or
wrong had nothing to do with it at all; but from what
the late lamented
Weald was saying when I crashed his
sheik
stuff it seems you’re right, and that really has got
something to do with the flowers that bloom in the
spring.”

There was another silence.
She accepted a cigarette
from his case, and a
light.

Presently she said:
“And after we leave the train?”

“Somewhere in this
wide world,” said the Saint, “there’s
a
bloke by the name of Essenden. He is going to Paris
to-morrow,
and so are we.”

Chapter V

HOW LORD ESSENDEN
WAS PEEVED,

AND
SIMON
TEMPLAR RECEIVED A VISITOR

Now, once upon a time
Lord Essenden had fired a revol
ver at Simon Templar with
intent to qualify him for a
pair of wings and a white
nightie. Simon bore Lord Essen
den no malice for that,
for the Saint was a philosopher,
and he was philosophically
ready to admit that on that
occasion he. had been in
the act of forcing open Lord
Essenden’s desk with a
burglarious instrument, to wit,
a jemmy; so that Lord
Essenden might philosophically
be held to have been
within his rights. Besides, the bul
let had missed him
by a yard.

No, Simon Templar’s
interest in Essenden, and particularly in Essenden’s trips to Paris, had
always been com
monplace and practical. Simon, having
once upon a time
watched and pried into Lord Essenden’s
affairs conscientiously and devotedly for some months, knew that Essen
den, on his return from every visit he paid to Paris (and
these visits were more frequent than the visits of a respec
tably married peer should rightly have been), was wont
to pay large numbers of French francs into his bank in
London. And the Saint, who had been younger than he
was at this time, knew that Englishmen who are able to
pay large numbers of French francs into their London
banks when they return from a short visit to Paris are
curiosities; and collecting curiosities was the Saint’s vocation.

So Simon Templar and Jill
Trelawney went to Paris
and stayed two days at the
Crillon in the Place de la
Concorde, which they chose
because Lord Essenden
chose it. Also, during
those two days the Saint held no conversation with Lord Essenden beyond once
begging
his pardon for treading on his toes in the lift.

It was during the
forty-ninth hour of their residence at
the
Crillon that Simon learnt that Essenden was leaving
by
the early train next morning.

His room was on the same floor
as Essenden’s. He re
tired to it when Essenden
retired, bidding the peer an affa
ble good-night in
the corridor, for that night the Saint
had
met Essenden in the bar and relaxed his aloofness.
In
fact, they had drunk whisky together. This without
any
reference to their previous encounter. On that occa
sion
the Saint had been masked; and now, meeting Es
senden
in more propitious circumstances, he had no wish
to
rake up a stale quarrel.

So they drank whisky
together, which was a dangerous
thing for anyone to do with
Simon Templar; and retired
at the same hour. Simon
undressed, put on pajamas and
a dressing gown, gave
Essenden an hour and a half in
which to feel the full
and final benefit of the whisky. Then
he sauntered down
the corridor to Essenden’s room,
knocked, received no
answer, sauntered in, and found the
peer sleeping
peacefully. Essenden had not even troubled
to undress. The Saint
regarded him sadly, covered him
tenderly
with the quilt, and went out again some minutes
later, closing the door behind him.

And that was really all
that happened on that trip to
Paris which is of
importance for the purposes of this
chronicle; for, on
the next day Lord Essenden duly went back to London, and he went with a tale of
woe that took
him straight to an old acquaintance.

Mr. Assistant
Commissioner Cullis, of Scotland Yard,
disliked having to
interview casual callers. Whenever it
was
possible he evaded the job. To secure an appointment
to see him was, to a private individual, a
virtual impossibility. Cullis would decide that the affair in question was
either so unimportant that it could be adequately
dealt
with by a subordinate, or so
important that it could only
be adequately coped with by the chief
commissioner, for
he was by nature a
retiring man. In this retirement he
was helped by his rank; in the days
when he had been a
more humble
superintendent, it had not been so easy to
avoid personal contact with the general public.

To this rule, however,
there were certain exceptions,
of which Lord Essenden
was one.

Lord Essenden could
obtain audience with Mr. Assist
ant Commissioner Cullis at almost any hour; for
Essen
den was an important man, and had
occupied a seat on
more than one royal commission. Indeed, it was
largely
due to Essenden that Mr. Cullis
held his present appoint
ment.
Essenden could not be denied. And so, when Essen
den came to Scotland Yard that evening demanding
converse with Mr. Cullis, on a day when Mr. Cullis
was
feeling more than usually unfriendly towards the whole
wide world, he was received at once, when a prime
min
ister might have been turned
away unsatisfied.

He came in, a fussy little
man with a melancholy mous
tache, and said, without
preface: “Cullis, the Angels of
Doom are
back.”

He had spoken before he
saw Teal, who was also present, stolidly macerating chicle beside the
commissioner’s
desk.

“What Angels of
Doom?” asked Cullis sourly.

Essenden frowned.

“Who is this
gentleman, Cullis?” he inquired. He ap
peared
to hesitate over the word “gentleman.”

“Chief Inspector
Teal, who has taken charge of the
case.”

Cullis performed the
necessary introduction briefly,
and Essenden fidgeted into
a chair without offering to
shake hands.

“What angels of what
doom?” repeated Cullis.

“Don’t be
difficult,” said Essenden pettishly. “You
know
what I mean. Jill Trelawney’s gang ——
”

“There never has been
a gang,” said Cullis. “Trelawney
and
Weald and Pinky Budd were the only Angels of
Doom.
Three people can’t be called a gang.”

“There were others——
”

“To do the dirty
work. But they weren’t anything.”

Essenden drummed his finger
tips on the desk in an
irritating tattoo.

“You know what I
mean,” he repeated. “Jill Trelawney’s back, then—if you like that
better. And so is the
Saint.”

“Where?”

“I came back from
Paris yesterday——
”

“And I went to Brixton
last night,” said Cullis annoyingly
.
“We do travel about, don’t we? But what’s that
got
to do with it?”

“The Saint was in
Paris—and Trelawney was with
him.”

“That’s better. You
actually saw them?”

“Not exactly—”

Cullis bit the end off a
cigar with appalling restraint.

“Either you saw her
or you didn’t,” he said. “Or do
you
mean you were drunk?”

“I’d had a few
drinks,” Essenden admitted. “Fellow I
met
in the bar. He must have been the Saint—I can see
it
all now. I’m certain I drank more than whisky. Any
way,
I can only remember getting back to my room, and
then—I
simply passed out. The next thing I knew was
that
the valet was bringing in my breakfast, and I was
lying
on the bed fully dressed. I don’t know what the
man
must have thought.”

“I do,” said
Cullis.

“Anyhow,” said
Essenden, “they’d taken a couple of
hundred
thousand francs off me—and a notebook and wallet as well, which were far more
important.”