The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

A sudden fear took her by the throat.

"Arrested? When?"

"Very near here. He meet me last night and say he has work for me. This morning I meet him again, he bring me along here, and he tell me to wait outside while he go in, and then we go off together and he tell me what it is to do. Then we get a little way from here, and a man recognize him in the street and say 'I want you.' "

The visitor waved his arms expressively.

"And Mr. Templar told you to come here?"

"Oh, no. But he look at me, and I know what to do."

She understood. The Saint could not have said anything before the police without giving her away. . "Who are you?" she asked.

"I am Duodecimo Gugliemi," said the little man dra­matically. "Now I tell you. Meester Templar, he get in a taxicab with the detective, and I get in another taxicab and I follow. Then a piece of paper come out of the taxi-cab window, and I stop my taxicab and pick it up. Here it is."

He flourished a muddy scrap of paper, and she took it from him and deciphered the smudged scrawl:

 

Wait in car outside Scotland Yard ten o'clock.

S.        

 

"Why didn't you come before?" she snapped. "If this was only just after he left here—-"

"I had to get a car. It is outside now. A friend of mine is driver. Meester Templar, he know my friend also."

"Wait a minute."

She left him at the door and was back in a moment, slipping into her coat and cramming her hat onto her head. Her little gun was in its holster at her side, under her coat.

"Now we'll go."

The Italian was scuttling down the stairs in front of her, and she followed quickly. There was a closed car standing by the curb, and Gugliemi opened the door for her. She stepped in, and he followed, and the car began to move off almost at once.

It was only then that she saw that thin gauze blinds were drawn across all the windows. She sat quite still.

"What are those curtains doing?"

"You must not see where we go. It would be dangerous for you to see." 

She sat in silence, with a delirious kaleidoscope of con­flicting speculations whirling over in her brain. She was sure only of one thing, and that was that she had been incredibly stupid. She peered at the man beside her, but he was gazing steadily ahead, and seemed to have tem­porarily forgotten her existence.

Presently, when her watch told her they had been driv­ing for nearly half an hour, Gugliemi spoke:

"We arrive. You must let me put this over your eyes."

There was a flash of a white handkerchief in his hand.

"Is—that—so?"