The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

It was a pure coincidence that Chief Inspector Teal should have been passing down Piccadilly at that moment. The car was not in Piccadilly, but at the side en­trance of the hotel, in Arlington Street, which Teal was crossing. He observed the car, as he invariably observed everything else around him, with drowsy eyes that appeared to notice nothing and in fact missed nothing.

He saw a man speaking to a chauffeur. The man wore an overcoat turned up around his chin, a soft hat worn low over his eyes, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. It is surprising how much of a man's face those three things can hide between them—especially at night. Teal thought there was something familiar about the man, but he could not connect up the association immediately.

He stood at the corner of the Ritz and watched the man enter the car. He was not looking for Simon Templar at that moment. He was not, as a matter of fact, even think­ing of Simon Templar. He had thought and talked of little else but Simon Templar for the last forty-eight hours, and his brain had wearied of the subject.

Thus it was that he stood where he was, inertly ponder­ing, until the car turned into St. James's Street. As it did so, a woman leaned forward to throw a cigarette end out of the window, and the light of a street lamp fell full across her face.

She was hatless. He saw straight, jet black hair, fine straight black eyebrows, eyes in deep shadow, carmine lips. These things belonged to no woman that he knew.

Thoughtfully he spat out a scrap of spearmint in which the flavour had ceased to last, extracted a fresh wafer from the packet in his pocket, engulfed it, and chewed with renewed enthusiasm. Then, still thoughtfully, he proceeded on his way.

The hiatus in his memory annoyed him, and even when he had filled it up it still annoyed him, for it was his boast that he never forgot a face. This was his first lapse in years, and he was never able to account for it to his satisfaction.

It was nearly an hour later, when he was chatting to the divisional inspector in Walton Street police station, that the blind spot in Teal's brain was suddenly uncovered.

"If you don't mind my saying so, sir," remarked the divisional inspector, "we've probably been combing all the wrong places. A man and a woman like Templar and Trelawney can reckon up some nerve between them. They're probably staying at some place like the Ritz——"