The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"Isn't it curious," said the commissioner, "that only the other night you should have been asking whether there might be a reason for the Angels to have a feud with Essenden?"

"Isn't it a scream?" agreed the Saint.

He set off for Belgrave Street in one of his moods of Saintly optimism.

It struck him that he was spending a great deal of his time in Belgrave Street. This would be his third visit that week.

He had no illusions about the possible outcome of it— the gun with which he had provided himself before leaving testified to that. A man cannot make himself as con­sistently unpopular as, for his own inscrutable reasons, it had in this case pleased the Saint to make himself, without there growing up, sooner or later, a state of ten­sion in which something has to break. The thing broken should, of course, have been Simon Templar, but up to that time the thing broken had somehow failed to, be Simon Templar. But this time ...

In the three days since his last visit life had been al­lowed to deal peacefully with him. He had used the milk from outside his front door with a sublime confidence in its purity, and had not been disappointed. He had walked in and out of the house without any fear of being again enfiladed by machine-gun fire; and in that again his judg­ment had proved to be right. On the other hand, he had treated letters and parcels delivered to him, and taxis which offered themselves for his hire, with considerable suspicion. He had as yet found no justification for this carefulness, but he realized that the calm could only be the herald of a storm. Possibly this third visit to Belgrave Street would precipitate the storm. He was prepared for it to do so.

He was kept waiting outside for some time before his summons was answered. He did not stand at the top of the stairs, however, while he was waiting, in a position where sudden death might reach him through the letter box, but placed himself on the pavement behind the shelter of one of the pillars of the portico. From behind this, with one eye looking round it, he was able to see the slight movement of a curtain in a ground-floor window as some­one looked out to discover who the visitor was. Simon allowed his face to be seen, and then withdrew into cover until the door opened. Then he entered quickly.

"Miss Trelawney is expecting you," said Wells as he closed the door.

The Saint glanced searchingly round the hall and up the stairs as far as he could see. There was no one else about.

He smiled seraphically.