The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

And he was calmly climbing into the car and feeling around for the starter while she still stared at him.

 

 

 

Chapter XII

HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WENT HOME,

AND CHIEF INSPECTOR TEAL DID NOT

 

 

THERE was silence for some distance before Simon Templar condescended to make a remark or Jill Trelaw­ney could think of one. Then—

"Lucky I rolled up," said the Saint calmly. "Saved you a taxi fare home."

She did not venture to inquire what he had been doing there himself, but a few minutes later he volunteered an explanation.

"But you oughtn't to be poaching on my preserves," he said aggrievedly. "I told you I was watching this place. After I'd left you, I went right back home and changed into more ordinary clothes and came along here in my own time. I just arrived in time to hear your bit of fancy shooting. Did you kill him?"

He put the question with such a cheerful carelessness that she had to laugh.

"I wasn't even trying to," she said mildly. "I probably shall one day, but that'll keep. Did you see much?"

"Only the exteriors."

"Then you must have seen the police," she said. "But you didn't offer to lend a hand."

He smiled.

"I was minding my own business," he said. "Your way out was easy enough, and I'd never heard you wanted chaperoning on these parties. If I'd thought you were likely to get in a jam, I'd have horned in; but since I saw the policeman waddling along a hundred yards astern with his suspenders bursting under the strain, and you skipping away like a young gazelle, I didn't see anything to get excited about. I've run too many races against the police myself, in my younger days, to get seriously wor­ried about any policeman who's less than three miles in the lead when he starts chasing me. But it does them good to run, Jill—it shakes up their livers and stops their kidneys congealing."

"Did you mean to do the same thing as I did?"

"Something like. I've been over that room with a small-toothed comb myself more than once, and plenty more of the house likewise; but it was only to-night I got your inspiration about the desk, and I was meaning to try your very own experiment on it."

"But I thought you said you didn't see anything inside the room?"

"Did I really?"

She looked at him with something like a grimace.

"Are you still being difficult?"

"Oh, no. . . . But let's revert for a moment to the ab­sorbing subject of supralapsarianists. Do you really be­lieve they wear barbed-wire underwear and take off their socks when they pass an infralapsarianist in the street?"

She pouted.