The Saint Meets His Match (21 page)

“Well, who are
you?” barked Essenden feebly, from the
outskirts of the group.

The man on the floor
pulled his cap off his eyes and
blinked dazedly about him. He was not a
beautiful sight.
The suit he wore was
stained and dusty. Portions of a pair of vividly striped socks were visible
between the frayed
ends of his
trousers and the tops of a pair of muddy boots.
Round his neck,
presumably as a substitute for shirt and
collar
and tie, he wore a red choker. His cap was very
purple. It appeared to
be several days since he had last
shaved,
and a black shield obscuring one eye gave his face
a sinister and unsavoury appearance. And when he
spoke
he whined.
           

“I wasn’t doin’ no
‘arm, guv’nor.”

Harver reached out one
ham-like hand to the man’s
collar and yanked him to his feet.

“What’s your
name?” he demanded.

“George,” said the burglar miserably.

“George what?”

“Albert
George.”

Harver shook his prisoner
like a rat.

“And what were you
doing there?”

“Oh, lay off him,
Red,” said Ganning. “He’s nothing
to
do with this.”

Essenden came closer.

“We don’t know
that,” he said. “This might be one of
her
tricks. Anyway, even if he isn’t anything to do with it,
he may have heard us talking.”

Harver shook the captive
again.

“How much did you
hear?” he snarled.

A look of fear came into
the eyes of Albert George.

“I didn’t ‘ear
nuffin’, s’welp me, I didn’t.”

“Liar!” said Flash Arne delicately.

“S’welp me,”
wailed the prisoner, “I didn’t ‘ear nuffin’.”

Harver chuckled throatily.

“I’ll s’welp
you,” he said, “if you don’t remember some
thing.
Who told you to come here?”

“S’welp me—”

Harver drove his fist
into the man’s chest, sending him
reeling back
against the wall.

“I promised I’d
s’welp you,” he said, “and I have. Now,
are you going to
talk?”

He followed up his victim with measured,
ponderous
strides, and the slighter man
cowered back. Arne and
Keld and
Ganning stood watching dispassionately. The
prisoner shrank away, his face contorted with terror. And
as Harver came within striking distance again and
his
fist went back for another blow,
Albert George voiced a
sharp, shrill yelp of panic.

“S’welp me!”

He ducked frantically, and Harver’s fist
smashed shatteringly into the wall. George scuttled into a corner and
crouched there, but Harver turned like an enraged
bull
and came after him.

“I’ll talk,”
screamed the prisoner. “Don’t hit me
again——
”

Harver seemed about to
refuse the offer, but Essenden
put himself between the
two men.

“Wait a minute,”
he said. “There’ll be time for that
later.
We’ll hear what he’s got to say.”

Albert George huddled
against the wall.

“It’s a cop,” he
said, between breaths that came in
labouring gasps. “But it wasn’t my
idea. It was a bloke I met this morning in Seven Dials. ‘E told me there was a
man ‘e wanted beaten up, name of Essenden. Is one
of
you gents Mr. Essenden?”

“Go on,” growled
Harver.

“There was a lot of
money for it, and ‘e said there
wasn’t no risk. I’d just
got to open a winder on the ground
floor, an’ get in. ‘E told me where the
alarms was, an’ ‘e
drew me a plan of the
‘ouse, an’ ‘e marked the bedroom,
an’
‘e says, ‘You just go in that room and slosh ‘im one,
an’ I’ll be waitin’ for yer at the Lodge gates wiv
a car to
tyke yer back to London.’
“

“He said he’d be
waiting at the Lodge gates with a car?”

Albert George swallowed.

“Yus. What’s the time?
‘E said ‘e’d be there at ten
o’clock.”

“What was this man’s
name?”

“I dunno. ‘E was a
toff. All dressed up, ‘e was, like ‘im.”
He
pointed to Flash Arne.

“Was there anyone
with him?”

“Yus. There was a
woman with ‘im. She was a toff, too.
She’ll be in the
car, too—she said she would.”

Ganning took his hand away
from his hip pocket.

“Well, that ought to
be easy,” he said. He looked at
Essenden.
“Guess we’d better go down and fetch them in.”

Essenden nodded. He could
hardly believe his good
fortune.

“You’d better all
go,” he said. “They may be armed.
Here,
tie this man up first.”

He took a length of cord
out of a drawer and brought it over. Harver seized the prisoner’s arms and
twisted
them roughly behind him. Keld performed the roping
with a practised hand. The prisoner was then dropped in
to a corner like a sack of coals.

“He won’t get out of
that in a hurry,” said Matt Keld.

Ganning hitched himself
round the table.

“C’mon,” he
said.

The four men trailed out
through the French windows.

Lord Essenden, left alone,
went and helped himself again from the decanter. This time it seemed that Fate
had played right into his hand. Jill Trelawney was clever —he admitted
that—but, for once, he had been cleverer.
He
gazed contemplatively at the unkempt figure which
lay
huddled in the corner, just where it had been dropped.
It
struck him that the Saint had showed an astounding
lack
of discrimination in sending such a man to “slosh
him
one.”

He was at a loss to divine
completely what might be the
object of these attacks.
It was not so long ago that he had
been severely
beaten up at the instigation of Jill Trelaw
ney by a member of the
Donnell gang. Here, apparently, yet another tough had been hired for the same
purpose. From her point of view he could see nothing that these
attacks might achieve. But, from his point of
view, he had
to admit that the
prospect of being beaten up and sent
to
hospital at regular intervals was, in a general way,
discouraging. He still carried a fresh pink scar
on his forehead as a memento of the last occasion, and it burned with
reminiscent hatred whenever he thought of Jill Tre
lawney.

He put down the glass and wiped his lips on a
silk
handkerchief. Albert George lay huddled
in the corner,
his chin drooped upon
his chest, and his whole pose one
of
lifeless resignation. Essenden went over and stirred him
with the toe of
a patent-leather shoe.

“How much were you
getting for this?” he barked, and
the
shaky staccato of his voice was an indication of the
strain
of anxiety that was racking his mind.

The man looked up at him
with one furtive eye.

” ‘Undred quid,”
he said, and lapsed again into his
stupor.

Essenden went back and
poured another two fingers of
whisky into his glass. A
hundred pounds was a large sum
of money to pay for a
bashing. There were many men
available, he knew, who
would undertake such a task for
much less, and if this
seedy, down-at-heel specimen was
being paid a hundred quid
for the job, Harry Donnell
must have picked up at least
twice that amount. Of
course, there were
varying rates for these affairs. A man can be put in hospital for a week for a
fairly reasonable
charge. More is asked for breaking a
limb, and corre
spondingly more for breaking two limbs. These facts are
very well known in some circles of which Lord
Essenden
had more than once touched
the fringe. Even so
…

Even so, that night’s
incident was but another confir
mation of the fact that Jill Trelawney was at
no loss for
funds to carry on her campaign.
So much the police had
already
observed, when her- previous exploits at the head
of the Angels of Doom had set them by the ears and
roused screams of condemnation for their
inefficiency
from a hysterical press.
And if the Angels of Doom were
dispersed,
and Jill Trelawney was herself a hunted crim
inal with a price on her head and the shadow of the
gallows on
her path, it seemed that she was still able to
keep control of the finances which had made her such a
formidable outlaw in the past. Of course, the
Saint was
with her now, and the
Saint’s resources were popularly
believed
to be inexhaustible. And there was also the
minor detail of the two
hundred thousand odd francs that
had
disappeared in Paris.

The memory of Paris
produced an unpleasant feeling
of emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and he
sent a gulp of whisky down to anaesthetize the void. For the wallet
and notebook which had been taken from him at the
same
time, and the contents of which
either Jill Trelawney or
the Saint
had successfully decoded, contained scraps of
information which, adroitly pieced together and studious
ly
followed up, were not incapable of bringing his own
name into dangerously close connection with a traffic
upon which the law frowns in a most unfriendly
way;
and which it can, without difficulty, be moved to punish
with five years’ penal servitude and twenty-five
strokes of a nine-thonged whip.

He glanced at his watch again, wondering how
much longer it would be before his men returned. And at that
moment he heard a bell ring in the depths of the
house.

He was so keyed up that
the sudden disturbance of the
silence, faint as it was,
made his hand jerk so that some of
the liquor in his
glass splashed onto the carpet at his feet. He put the glass down carefully,
and touched the heavy
metallic shape in his jacket pocket to reassure
himself.
Then, half hesitantly, and
uncertain of the impulse which
prompted him to go and investigate, he
went out into the
dark hall. As he switched
on the lights, the summons
was
repeated.

He opened the door.

Jill Trelawney stood on
the threshold, straight and slim
in a plain tweed travelling
costume, with her own soft
hair, freed from the black
wig that had so effectively
baulked Chief Inspector
Teal’s celebrated memory, peep
ing from under the small
brown hat that framed her
exquisite face. At the
sight of Essenden her eyes gave no
more than the most
cursory flicker of recognition.

“Good-evening,” she said quietly.

He stepped back
falteringly, perplexed, but without
hesitation she swept past him into the
hall; and, with the
world reeling about his
ears, he turned to close the door.

It has been said that she
swept past him into the hall.
That, in fact, was Lord
Essenden’s own impression, but
actually she was almost
on his heels—close enough to press
into the small of
his back something round and hard
which he knew
could only be one thing—and when she
spoke her voice
Came from a point close behind his ear.

“Put them up,” she commanded, in the
same quiet tone
in which she had said
“Good-evening.”

Lord Essenden put them up. His brain seemed to
have gone dead—and must, he knew now, have gone dead at least two minutes ago.

She saw the light beyond
the door of a room farther
down the hall and urged
him towards it. He led on, help
lessly, his hands held
high above his head, back into the
room he had just left.

In the centre of the room she stopped him and
flung a
glance over her shoulder at the
bound figure in the corner.

“Hullo, Saint!” she said.

2

Simon Templar smiled with
his lips and his one visible
eye.