The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

He was dusting his coat. It was really a very respectable coat, when he brushed off the shabbiness which he had applied with French chalk. The enormous boots, re­moved, disclosed a neat pair of shoes worn beneath them. The horribly striped socks were dummies, which he un­buttoned and put in his pocket. The red choker, removed also, proved that the impression it conveyed at first sight was false: he actually wore shirt, collar, and tie underneath it, and all three were quietly elegant. Before Essen-den's staring eyes, he slipped off the very purple cap and the eyeshade, wiped the blue make-up from his chin with his handkerchief, and so ceased to bear the slightest resemblance to Albert George.

"An ingenious device," he said, "to divide the enemy's camp. But not, to tell you the truth, original. None the less useful for that."

"Did you have any trouble?" asked Jill. "Not much. Just one rough man. He hit me once, which was tiresome, and he hit the wall once, which must have hurt him quite a lot. Otherwise, no damage was done. And the whole bunch went off to look for the car like four maggots in search of a green cheese."

Essenden, standing back against the wall with Jill Trelawney's automatic centred unwaveringly on his waistcoat, knew fear. There was a gun in his own pocket, but he dared not reach for it. The girl had never taken her eyes off him for more than a fleeting second, and the ex­pression in those eyes told him that her finger was itching on the trigger.

He realized that he had been criminally careless. Even when he saw her outside the front door, he had not been alarmed—so insanely blinded had he been by the story of Albert George. He knew that his four guards would return in a few moments; he was sure also that, whatever she meant to do, she would not do it while he could con­vince her that so long as she held her hand she had the chance of getting the information his advertisement had offered; he had meant to play up that offer—it was his trump card for an emergency, and he had been convinced that as long as he held that card he could be in no real danger. But the unmasking of Albert George—the revela­tion that there was not only Jill Trelawney, but also Simon Templar, to cope with—that had upset Essenden's confident equilibrium.

There was something rather horrible about a shifting flicker of snapping nerves in the eyes of such a fussy and foolish-looking little man.