The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"I am a brilliantly clever man," said the Saint, in his airy way, "and picnics like this are sitting rabbits to me. I worked this one out for your special benefit, and you've enjoyed it so much, too. . . . You see, it would have been perfectly easy to bump you off, but that wasn't all we wanted. Waldstein and Essenden had been bounced too rapidly, and we weren't making the same error over you. We wanted to hear you sing to us here before you passed on to join the herald angels; but we quite ap­preciated that we weren't a sufficient audience. Jill and I are simple souls whom the world has used hardly, and Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the sea of life—"

"Cut the cackle," rasped Cullis, with a new venom in his voice. "If you're just trying to gain time——"

"I'm unbosoming in my own style, brother," said the Saint plaintively. "Give me a break. And now where was I? ... Oh, yes. Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the——"

"I'll give you three minutes more. If you've got anything to say——"

"O. K., Algernon. Then let's put it that your word would probably outweigh anything that Jill or I or Duodecimo could say. So there had to be a witness who couldn't be challenged. And who could be a more ideal witness than the chief commissioner himself?"

The Saint saw Cullis's eyes narrow down to mere pin points, and laughed again.