The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

At that very moment she heard a heavy footfall behind her, but she could not wait. Whoever it might be, she must take her chance—that single shot she had fired, ringing through the open window, must have thundered over the half of Hampstead, and her luck could not be ex­pected to hold out till the end of the world.

Her deduction was right: she heard a shrill scream of a police whistle as she leapt swiftly backwards and spun around. Of the man whose footsteps she thought she had heard she could see nothing, and she was not interested to pursue him. But she could see an unmistaka­ble shape at the gate by which she had entered, and without hesitation she turned towards the back of the house and went racing over the lawn.

Running footsteps sounded distinctly on the gravel behind her, and then there was a shot, and a bullet sang past her head; but it was too dark for Cullis to take a good aim, and with his right hand incapacitated he would be lucky to touch her. And at that moment she felt, for some reason, supremely confident in the efficacy of her own luck against his.

At the end of the lawn her feet sank into the soft earth of flower beds; beyond, she saw a low wall. She tumbled over it anyhow, picked herself up, and stumbled over the deserted ground ahead.

She could hear voices behind her, and once when she glanced back she saw the light of a bull's-eye lantern bobbing about in the dark behind.

The going was treacherous and uneven, but she hur­ried along as swiftly as she could. Her luck held. Once a loose scaffold pole caught her foot and almost brought her down, and once she ran straight into a low pile of bricks that barked her shins and grazed her knuckles; but she made her way across the rest of the ground without further damage, and presently turned out of a deeply rutted track into the road behind.

There she slowed up her steps, and went on with a leisurely slouching stride. At any moment someone might come running past to investigate the uproar, and she had no desire to attract attention. But the road was appar­ently deserted, except for a small two-seater drawn up by the curb a little way ahead.

At least, she thought, the road was deserted, but as she drew nearly level with the two-seater she heard a quick step behind her. A hand gripped her arm.

She whirled round, her hand reaching again for the butt of her automatic, and looked into the smiling face of the Saint.

"It's a cop," he said. "And now, will you walk home, or shall we ride?"