The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

That might well be the beginning of the end. Weald had always had a wholesome respect for the tenacity of the police when once they got hold of a solid bone to chew. Throughout his career he had made a point of keeping away from any material contact with them. As long as they were working in the dark against him he could feel safe, but once they could make any definite accusation, and thus get a hold on him, there was no knowing where it might end.

But in Jill Trelawney there was no sign of weakening.

"We can still pull through," she said.

Weald's thin fingers twitched his tie nervously.

"How can you say that after what we know now?"

"We're not dead yet. In your way, you're right, of course. We've tripped over about the most ridiculous little thing that we could have tripped over, and if we aren't careful we'll go stumbling over the edge of the precipice. But I'm not giving an imitation of a jelly in an earthquake."

"Nor am I," said Weald angrily.

The mocking contempt remained in her eyes, and he knew that he was not believed.

With a certain grim concession to her sense of humour she remembered the Saint's warning before they left Belgrave Street. The Saint had certainly been right. In the circumstances, Weald was likely to be very much less use than a tin tombstone. She saw the way he put a hand to cover the twitching of his weak mouth, and realized that Stephen Weald was going to pieces rapidly.

Chapter IV

HOW JILL TRELAWNEY TOLD A LIE, AND

SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE NOTHING BUT

THE TRUTH

 

HARRY DONNELL lived in a house in a mean street on the outskirts of Birmingham. It was a curious house, but as soon as he had seen it he knew that few other houses could have fulfilled his requirements so completely, for he had always boasted that if necessary he would resist arrest to the death.

This house had grown up, somehow, in the very inside of a block. Being completely surrounded by the other houses of the block necessarily deprived its rooms of most of the light of day, but Donnell could not see this as a disadvantage. The same fact made the house very difficult to attack, and this to his mind was compensation enough. In fact, the building could only be approached directly through a straight and narrow alleyway between two of the outer houses.