Leslie Charteris - The Saint Meets His Match

It sent Pinky Budd a dull pink, and Stephen Weald a clammy grey-white.

Jill Trelawney's cheeks went hot with a rising flush of anger. Perhaps because of her greater sensitiveness, she appreciated the mocking arrogance of that voice more than either of the others. It carried every conceivable strength and concentration of insolence and impudence and biting challenge.

"Well?"

That gentle drawl again. It was amazing what that voice could do with one simple syllable. It jagged and rawed it with the touch of a high-speed saw, and drawled it out over a bed of hot Saharan sand in a hint of impish laughter.

"Templar!"

Budd dropped the name huskily, and Weald inhaled sibilantly through his teeth. The girl's lip curled.

"You were talking about me," drawled the man in the window.

It was a flat statement. He made it to the girl, ignoring the two men after one sweeping stare. For a fleeting second her voice failed her, and she was furious with herself. Then—

"Mr. Templar, I presume?" she said calmly.

The Saint bowed as profoundly as his position in the window admitted.

"Correct." A flickering little smile cut across his mouth. "Jill Trelawney?"

"Miss Trelawney."

"Miss Trelawney, of course. For the present. You'll be plain Trelawney to the judge, and in jail you'll just have a number."

It was extraordinary how a spark of hatred could be kindled and fanned to a flame in such an infinitesimal space of time. An instant before he had appeared in that window he had been nothing to her but a name — until then.

And now she was looking at the man through a blaze of anger that had leapt up to white heat within her in a moment. Before that, she had been frankly bored with the fears of Weald and Budd. She had dismissed them, callously. "If it'll make you feel any happier to have him fixed—" It had been completely impersonal. But now.

She knew what hate was. There were three men she hated, with everything she did and every breath she took. She would not have believed that there was room in her soul for more hatreds than that, and yet this new hatred seemed momentarily to overshadow all the others.

She was looking fixedly at him, unaware of anything or anyone else, engraving every feature of his appearance on her memory in lines of fire. He must have been tall above the average, she judged from the way he had to stoop to get his head in at the window; and his shoulders fitted uneasily in the aperture, wide as it was. A tall, lean buccaneer of a man, dark of hair and eyebrow, bronzed of skin, with a face incredibly clean-cut and deep-set blue eyes. The way those eyes looked at her was an insult in itself.

"I believe you were proposing to fix me," said the Saint. "Why not? I'm here, if you want me."

He broke the silence without an effort — indeed, you might have said he did not know that there had been a silence.

"If you want a fight," said Budd redly, "I'm here. See?"

"Wait a minute!"

The girl stopped Budd with a hand on his arm as he was fumbling with the door.

"Mr. Templar has his posse within call," she said cynically. "Why ask for trouble?"

The Saint's eyebrows twitched blandly.

"I have no posse. I had a gang once, but it died. Didn't they tell you I was working alone?"

"If they had," said the girl, "I shouldn't believe them. You don't look the kind of man who can bluff without a dozen armed men behind him."

He trembled with a gust of noiseless mirth.

"Quite right. I'm terrified, really!"

The mocking eyes glanced again from Budd to Weald, and back again to the girl. That maddening smile flickered again on the clean-cut lips with a glitter of perfect teeth.

"And are these two of the Lady's maids?"

"Suppose they are?" rapped the girl.

"What a dramatic ideal"

She discovered that the eyes could hold something even more infuriating than insolence, and that was a condescending amusement. A little while before she had been treating Stephen Weald like a fractious child: now she was receiving the same treatment herself.

"I'm glad you like it," she said sweetly.

"You're not," said the Saint cheerfully. "But let that pass. I came to give you a word of advice."

"Thanks very much."

"Not at all."

He pointed with a long brown finger past the girl.

"There's a house up there," he said. "Don't pretend you don't know, because I should hate you to have to tell any unnecessary lies. It belongs to Lord Essenden. My advice to you is — don't go there."

"Really?"

"They're holding a very good dance up at that house," said the Saint sardonically. "I should hate you to spoil it. All the wealth of the county is congregated together. If you could only have seen the jewels—"

She had opened her bag, and there was a white slip of pasteboard in her hand. She held it up so that he could see.

"I think this will admit me."

"Let me see it."

He had taken it from her fingers before she realized what he was doing. And yet he did not appear to have snatched it.

"Quite a good forgery," he remarked — "if it is a forgery.

But I could believe you capable of engineering a real invitation, Jill."

"It's quite genuine. And I want it back — please!"

Simon Templar looked down the muzzle of the automatic and seemed to see something humorous there.

He looked perfectly steadily into her eyes, and with perfect deliberation he tore the card into sixteen pieces and let them trickle through his fingers to the floor of the car.

"Your nerves are good, Templar!" she said through her teeth.

He appeared to consider the suggestion quite seriously.

"They've never troubled me. But that didn't require nerves. Another time I shall be more careful. This time, you hadn't had long enough to muster up the resolution to shoot. It wants a good bit of resolution to kill your first man in cold blood. But when you've thought it over… Yes, I think I shall be careful next time."

"You'd better!" snarled Weald shakily.

The Saint noticed his existence.

"You spoke?"

"I said you'd better be careful — next time!"

"Did you?" drawled the Saint.

He disappeared from the window, but the illusion that he had gone was soon dispelled. The door opened, and Simon Templar stood with one foot on the running board.

"Get out of that car!"

"I'm damned if I will—"

"You're damned, anyway. Come out!"

He reached in, caught Weald by the collar, and jerked him out into the road with one swift heave.

"Stephen Weald, dope trafficker, blackmailer, and confidence man — so much for you!"

The Saint's hand shot out, fastened on one of the ends of Weald's immaculate bow tie, pulled… That would have been enough at any time, the simplest gesture of contemptuous challenge; but the Saint invested it with a superbly assured insolence that had to be seen to be believed. For a moment Weald seemed stupefied. Then he lashed out, white-lipped, with both fists…

The Saint picked him out of the ditch and tumbled him back into the car.

"Next?"

"If you want a fight—" began Budd; and once again the girl stopped him.

"You mustn't annoy Mr. Templar," she said witheringly. "Mr. Templar's a very brave man — with his posse waiting for him up the road."

The Saint raised his eyebrows.

"Still that story?" he protested. "How can I convince you?"

"Don't bother to try," she answered. "But if you'd like to come to 97, Belgrave Street, at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, we'll be there."

"So shall I," said the Saint cheerfully. "And I give you my word of honour I shall come alone."

He held her eyes for a moment, and then he was gone; but a few seconds later he was back again as the self-starter burred under her foot.

"By the way," he said calmly, "I have to warn you that you'll receive a summons for standing here all this time with your lights out. Sorry, I'm sure."