The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"Joking apart," said the Saint, "he's an interesting psychological specimen: I'd figured that in the first few minutes. He was quite ready to put you out of the way in his own fashion—for a fee—since he had been told that you were a political nuisance. But I had a much better story to tell him. I didn't even have to beat him up, which I was quite prepared to do. I took him into my confidence. I dosed him with a bottle of Chianti I found lying around. I told him he'd been humbugged all the way down the line, and I was able to produce a bit of evidence to con­vince him."

"What evidence was that?"

"Never mind. But he was really quite ready to be con­vinced, because, as I said, you'd made a great impression on him. And when he saw what the game was, what with his native chivalry and another litre of Chianti and my persuasive tongue, he switched right round the other way. And now I believe he'd go out after Cullis with a gun in each hand and a stiletto behind his ear if you asked him to. Did you know his first name was Duodecimo? That's a jolly sort of name, that is. We were getting as matey as that before the end. . . . The really interesting point is our assistant commissioner's psychology."

The girl was lighting a cigarette.

"Go on," she said.

"You see his point," said the Saint. "You're getting troublesome, so Cullis employs Gugliemi to bump you off. If Gugliemi doesn't get caught, so much the better. If he does get caught, and tries to tell anyone that the assistant commissioner employed him to take you for a ride, they'd just think he was raving. It was really beautifully simple. My respectable friend will just love that story."

The girl looked at him curiously.

"Who is this respectable friend you keep talking about?"

"Auntie Ethel," said the Saint lucidly. "She has a very fine sense of humour. For instance, she simply roared over the story of those papers that were taken from the Rec­ords Office."

Jill Trelawney watched him with narrowed eyes. She had not seen him in this mood before, and it annoyed her. When they had joined forces in Birmingham, and throughout the adventures which followed—even in the earlier days of bitter warfare—everything had been per­fectly straight and above-board. But now the Saint was starting to collect an aura of mystery about him, and she realized, almost with a shock, that in spite of the fantastic manner in which he played his part there was something very solid behind his fooling.