The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"But have you only just discovered that?" said the Saint.

He made her smile. Even if her laughter had been of neither hysteria nor bravado, it had not been a thing to reassure him. A smile was different. And he still found it easy to make her smile.  

But she was of such a very unusual mettle that he could have no peace of mind with her at such a moment. They were very recent partners, and still she was almost a stranger to him. They were familiar friends of a couple of days' standing; and he hardly knew her. In the days of their old enmity he had recognized in her a fearless inde­pendence that no man could have lightly undertaken to control—unless he had been insanely vain. And with that fearless independence went an unconscious aloofness. She would follow her own counsel, and never realize that any­one else might consider he had a right to know what that counsel was. That aloofness was utterly unaware—he divined that it had never been in her at all before the days of the Angels of Doom, and when, the work of the Angels of Doom was done it would be. gone.

And Teal's whistle was silent. Simon looked down from a window, and saw that Teal had gone. But a uniformed man stood at the foot of the steps on the pavement out­side, and looked up from time to time.

"Well?" said the girl.

"He's gone for his warrant," said the Saint. "Cast your bread upon the waters, and you shall find it after many days. We can thank your Angels of Doom for that. If you hadn't made the police so unpopular, Teal would have risked the search without a warrant. As it is, we've got a few minutes' grace, which may run into two hours. Pardon me."

He went through into the bedroom and selected a coat from his wardrobe. He returned with this, and a pillow from the bed.

"Keep over on that side of the room."

She obeyed, perplexedly. He pushed an armchair over against the window, put the pillow inside the coat he had brought, and sat coat and pillow in the chair.

"Now—where's your hat?"

He found the hat, and propped it up over the coat on a walking stick. Then he carried over a small table and set it beside the chair; and on the table he put a small lamp. After a calculating survey, he switched on the small lamp.

"Now turn out that switch beside you."

She did as she was told; and the only light left in the room came from the small lamp on the table by the arm­chair against the window.

"The Shadow on the Blind," said the Saint. "A Mystery in Three Acts. Act One."

She looked at him.

"And Act Two—the fire escape?"