The Saint Meets His Match (22 page)

“Hullo, Jill!”
he murmured. “And how have you been
keeping
all these years?”

The girl backed towards him, still covering
Essenden with her little gun; and there was a knife in her left hand.
The Saint turned over, and Jill stooped and hacked
swiftly
and accurately at the cords that held him. In a
moment he was free, scrambling to his feet and stretching
himself.

“That’s better,”
he remarked. “Brother Matthew has
efficient
but violent ideas on the subject of roping people.
Pull
the knots as tight as you can without breaking the
rope—that’s
Matthew. Very sound, but uncomfortable for
the
victim. However, here we are… .”

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, re
moved, 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 under
neath
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 re
semblance
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 waist
coat, 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 ex
pression 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 con
vince 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
revela
tion 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.

The grimly brilliant
scheme that he had elaborated
was toppling down like a
house of cards… .

But Jill Trelawney only
laughed.

“Now we have our
talk, don’t we?” she said; and Lord
Essenden
seemed to shiver—but that might have been due
to
nothing but the draught from the French windows
which
his guards had left ajar when they went out.

By the windows stood the
Saint.

“The boys are coming
back,” he
said. “This time, I
think,
a gun might save trouble.”

He stepped over to
Essenden, lifted the automatic from
Essenden’s pocket,
and retired to the cover of a bookcase
which
projected in such a way that it would hide him
from
the view of anyone entering by the windows.

“And if you’ll just
take Essenden for a walk,” he
drawled,
“I’ll give a yodel when the collection is complete.
It’s a bit late in the year, but you might find some mistle
toe somewhere——
”

“O.K., Big
Boy.”

Simon watched Essenden
removed; and leaned back
against the wall with the
peer’s gun swinging lightly in
his hand.

Voices spoke outside the
windows. The voice of Red
Harver, booming above the others, said: “A
plant, that’s
what it was——
”

And the voice stopped
short, on the threshold of the
room, it seemed to Simon;
and the other voices died down
also.

Then Flash Arne spat an
unprintable word.

Keld yapped: “He
couldn’t’ve got outa those ropes—not by hisself, he couldn’t——
”

“There’s the rope
there on the floor where he was,” G
anning
hissed derisively. “I suppose he just melted and
trickled
through it and froze again on the other side.”

“Don’t talk
soft,” snarled Harver. “We know Albert
George
was a liar. One of his pals has been in here while
we
were outside——
”

“Quate,” said the
Saint apologetically. “Oh, quate!”

Harver whipped round, his
fists doubling; but the automatic in the Saint’s hand discouraged him. It dis
couraged Ganning, who was renowned for his slick-
ness on the
draw, and Flash Arne, who knew some tricks
of
his own; and it discouraged Matthew Keld, that vio
lent but efficient rope expert.

“Sorry,” said the
Saint, without regret, “but it’s a cop
as
George said.”

Red Harver, peering
savagely at him, recognized him
by his voice.

“You——
”

“Oh, no,” said the Saint in distress.
“Never. I hate sit
ting with my back to
the engine.”

He herded the four men into
a convenient corner, in
his briskly persuasive
way, and raised his voice to Jill.
Lord Essenden came
through the door first, and Ganning
drew in his breath
sharply; but the mystery was
solved when Jill Trelawney
followed.

“If you’ll take
over,” said the Saint, “I’ll go and look
for
some more rope.”

The girl nodded briefly.
Her automatic, swinging in a
little arc over the
latitude of the five prisoners, said all
that
there was left to say.

Simon went swiftly through the pockets of the
group,
and brought back four guns, two life
preservers, a knife, and a razor, which he deposited in the coal scuttle with a
faint gesture of distaste.

Then he sought the kitchen, and presently came
back
with six fathoms of good cord.

His methods of roping were
less primitive than those
of Matthew Keld, but they
were equally efficient. When he had finished, only four Houdinis could have
restored
Messrs. Arne, Ganning, Keld, and Harver to the position
of mobile actors in the scene. Essenden, however,
he left.
“You might,” he
suggested to Jill, “want to ask his
lordship a few questions. And I might want this rope’s
end to
encourage him to answer.”

He made a long yard of
rope
 
whistle horrifically
through the air; but the girl shook her head.

“He’s already started
to answer.”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Have you rung a
bell?”

Essenden spoke in a
cracked voice: “Of course I’ve answered. Why shouldn’t I have meant what I
said in my advertisement? But I thought you might think my advertisement was a
trap, so I had to protect myself. That’s
the
only reason I brought these other men into it.”

“A beautiful
bunch!” murmured the Saint skepti
cally.
His leisured gaze swept over the quartet like a
genial
blizzard. “I think I know them all. I know about
Red
Harver’s seven years for manslaughter—which ought
to
have been a quick hanging for murder. I know all about Brother Matthew and the
Waikiki Club. I know
how Flash Arne gets the
money to buy his diamond
rings. And I’ve met Snake
Ganning before. Say ‘how
d’you do,’ Snake.”

“I admit all
that,” said Essenden fretfully, “but——
”

“What you mean,” said Jill Trelawney
calmly, “is that
you laid a trap for
us, but we’ve made you the pigeon.
You’re in the soup you brewed for
Simon and me. Your gay little party has kind of bust. And now, to save your
skin, you’re prepared to reopen your original offer. Hav
ing flopped on the double-cross, you’re anxious
to hurry
back to the first bargain.
Isn’t that it?”

She had no grounds for
asking whether that was it. But
then, the question was
almost purely rhetorical. What
she was actually doing
was to point out to Essenden the
only course of action that
was left open to him. She
wasn’t asking a question
at all—she was commanding.
Persuasively she spoke,
in a quiet and reasonable voice,
with sudden death aimed
steadily from her hand, and
murder in the clear tawny eyes like two drops
of frozen
gold.

“Yes,” said
Essenden hoarsely, “that’s it.”

“Go on.”

Essenden swallowed.

“Your father wasn’t
framed.”

He paused.

“I said—Go on!”

The girl’s voice ripped
out like a pistol shot; yet she
had not spoken loudly.
The likeness came only from her
tone—sharp, swift, distinct, deadly.

“I was in it—I admit
that—the thing he was framed
for, but he was unlucky.
You don’t believe me. But I can
prove it. I’ve kept the
papers—papers that never came
into the inquiry, naturally.
If they had, they’d have made
it worse for him. I can
show you letters in his own hand ——”

“Where?”

“In my private
safe—hidden away—”

“Where?”

Essenden seemed to flinch
from the glacial inclemency
of her voice.

“In the cellar.”

“Oh, yeah?” said the Saint
unnecessarily.

“There’s a door under
the main staircase. You go
down——
”

“And flop through a
patent trapdoor into the castle
drains,” said the
Saint, unimpressed. “Sorry to disap
point
you, comrade, but we’ve heard that one before.”

The girl answered
unemotionally.

“I’ll go and see if
he’s lying,” she said. “If he is—
well,
you can use that rope’s end. But we might as well
see—in
case he’s telling the truth by accident.”

Simon tossed the length
of rope onto the table with a
shrug.

“I’ll go,” he
said, “though I don’t think it’s much use.
Let’s
have some more directions. Down the stairs——
”

“You come to the wine
cellar,” said Essenden. “Go
straight through
that. There’s a door at the far end, and
the
key hangs on a nail beside it. You’ll find some more
steps
down. They lead into what’s left of an old secret
passage.
About twenty yards along, it opens into a sort
of
cave …”

Simon heard out the story.

“Right,” he said.
“It sounds to me like a feeble attempt
to
waste time, but I’ll go. I’m just warning you that if
it
is
a waste of time—oh, Marmaduke, my pet, you’re
going to wish you’d never had that bright idea.”

“I’m not wasting
time,” said Essenden.

The Saint looked at him. He
had a dim suspicion that
there was something in
Essenden’s eyes that should not
have been there; but he
could not be sure. And yet—what
could the trick possibly
be? Not more than a device to get
rid of the man, in
the hope that the woman would be
easier to deal with.