The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

He saw the girl into the car, and came back to fetch another coat from the stand. Teal buttonholed him.

"Is this an elopement, Saint?"

"Now that's just what it isn't, Claud. ..... No, the Old Pentonvillains choker, Orace. ... Anything I can do

for you on the way, Claud Eustace?"

"If it is an elopement," said Teal lusciously, "you fixed it up quick enough."

Simon twisted the scarf round his neck and canted his most piratical hat at its most piratical angle over his right eye. And then he tapped the detective gently on the shoulder.

"Has it never occurred to you," he said, "that one day a story might be written in which the heroine didn't fall in love with the hero, and the hero didn't fall in love with the heroine—and they were both perfectly happy in spite of that? Because this is that story. I am the most super­lative story-book hero that ever lived, but the rules were not made for me."

And he took down Teal's bowler from the rack, and clapped it rakishly on the detective's head, and pulled Teal's ear, and punched him in, the stomach, and was gone; and an echo of Saintly laughter seemed still to hang in the little hall long after the clamour of the Hirondel had died away.

 

 

THE END

 

Look for the sign of The Saint on other Avon books.