The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

The Saint had been gone eight hours when a peal on the bell rang sharply through the studio and set the girl's heart pounding against her ribs.

No one should have rung that bell. The Saint himself had a key, and no tradesmen ever called, for obvious reasons. Who it could be outside, therefore, except a detective whom the Saint had not been so clever in shaking off as he had believed : . .

As she stood by the table with her brain in a whirl the ring was repeated.

She went to the window and looked out and down into the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen there—no signs of a cordon or even of one or two men told off to wait for an escape by another exit. As for the man at the door, it was impossible to inspect him; for the entrance of the studio was on the third and top floor of the building, and the architect, not knowing that his building was ever to be used for sheltering a wanted criminal, had omitted to provide a window looking out onto the landing, or any other similar means of inspecting callers before opening the front door.

Jill Trelawney thought all this out in a flash, and made her decision.

Whoever it was, she would gain nothing by refusing to open the door. If it were the police, the block would be well surrounded, and the door would eventually be forced if she refused to answer the bell. If it were anyone else . . . She had no idea who it could be, but she must still answer.

The little automatic that she was never without in those days was in her hand when she went to the door and opened it.

The first sight of the man outside was reassuring. Cer­tainly he was not a detective, whatever else he might be— he was far too small and slim ever to have succeeded in entering the ranks of the metropolitan police, even if he had wanted to. A second glance told her that he was not likely even to have wanted to; for there was something unmistakably un-English about the exaggerated nattiness of his attire which would have marked him for a foreigner anywhere, even without the evidence of his thin dark features and his restless dark eyes.

"Mees Trelawney?"

After only a fractional hesitation she admitted the charge. His manner was so confident that she realized immediately that a bluff would carry no weight. At the same time, although he seemed so certain of her identity, there was nothing menacing or even alarming about his manner.

But in a moment he explained himself.

"I come from the part of Meester Templar. He has been arresting."