"Are you staying to tea again?" she asked sweetly.
"Before I've finished," said Simon, "I expect you'll be wanting me to stay the week."
"Come in."
"Thanks. I will. Aren't we getting polite?"
He went through.
In the sitting room he found Weald and Budd, as he had expected to find them, though they had not been exposed to the field of view which he had from the landing through the open door.
"Hullo, Weald! And are you looking for Waldstein, too?"
Weald's sallow face went a shade paler, but he did not answer at once. The Saint's mocking gaze shifted to Budd.
"Been doing any more fighting lately, Pinky? I heard that some tough guy beat up a couple of little boys in Shoreditch the other night, and I thought of you at once."
Pinky's fists clenched.
"If you're looking for trouble, Templar," he said pinkly, "I'm waiting for you, see?"
"I know that," said the Saint offensively. "I could hear you breathing as I came up the stairs."
He heard the door close behind him, and turned to face the girl again.
It was a careless move, but he had not been expecting the hostilities to be reopened quite so quickly. The fact that the mere presence of his own charming personality might be considered by anyone else as a hostile movement in itself had escaped him. In these circumstances there is, by convention, a certain amount of warbling and woofling before any active unpleasantness is displayed. Simon Templar had always found this so — it took a certain amount of time for his enemies to get over the confident effrontery of his own bearing, and, in these days, their ingrained respect for the law which he was temporarily representing — before they nerved themselves to action. But this was not his first visit to Belgrave Street, nor their first sight of him, and they might have been expected to show enough intelligence to fortify themselves against his coming beforehand. Simon, however, had not expected it. It was the first slip he had made with the Angels of Doom.
He felt the sharp pressure in his back, and knew what it was without having to turn and look. Even then he did not turn.
Without batting an eyelid he said what he had come to say, exactly as if he had noticed nothing amiss whatever.
"I've still some more news to give you, Jill."
There was a certain mockery in the eyes that returned his gaze.
"Do you still want to give it?"
"Why, yes," said the Saint innocently. "Why not?"
Weald spoke behind him.
"We're listening, Templar. Don't move too suddenly, because I might think you were going to put up a fight."
The Saint turned slowly and glanced down at the gun in Weald's hand.
"Oh, that! Wonderful how science helps you boys all along the line. And a silencer, too. Do you know, I always thought those things were only used in stories written for little boys?"
"It's good enough for me."
"I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be too good for you," said the Saint. "Except, perhaps, a really mutinous sewer." Then he turned round again. "Do you know a man named Donnell, Jill?"
"Very well."
"Then you'd better go ring him up and tell him goodbye. He's going to Dartmoor for a long holiday, and he mightn't remember you when he comes out."
She laughed.
"The police in Birmingham have been saying things like that about Harry Donnell for the last two years, and they've never taken him."
"Possibly," said the Saint in his modest way. "But this time the police of Birmingham aren't concerned."
"Then who's going to take him?"
Simon smoothed his hair.
"I am."
Pinky Budd chuckled throatily.
"Not 'arf, you ain't!"
"Not 'arf, I ain't," agreed the Saint courteously.
"May I ask," said the girl, "how you think you're going to Birmingham?"
"By train."
"After you leave here?"
"After I leave here."
"D'you think you're leaving?" interjected Weald.
"I'm sure of it," said the Saint calmly. "Slinky Dyson will let me out. He's an old friend of mine."
The girl opened the door. Dyson was outside.
"Here's your friend the Saint," she said.
"Hullo, Slinky," said the Saint. "How's the eye?"
Dyson slouched into the room.
"Search him," ordered Weald.
Dyson obeyed, doing the job with ungentle hands. Simon made no resistance. In the circumstances that would only have been a mediocre way of committing suicide.
"How true you run to type, Jill!" he murmured. "This is just what I was expecting. And now, of course, you'll tell me that I'm going to be kept here as your prisoner until you choose to let me go. Or are you going to lock me in the cellar and leave the hose running? That was tried once. Or perhaps you're going to ask me to join your gang. That'd be quite original."
"Sit down," snapped Weald.
Simon sat down as if he had been meaning to do so all the time.
Jill Trelawney was at the telephone. The Saint observed her out of the corner of his eye while he selected and lighted a cigarette from his case. He waited quite patiently while she tried to make the call, but he feigned surprise when she failed.
"That really upsets me," he said. "Now you'll have to go to Birmingham yourself. I hate to think I'm putting you to so much inconvenience."
He saw Budd busying himself with some loose rope, and when the ex-prize fighter came over with the obvious intention of binding him, the Saint put his hands behind him without being told to. Weald was talking to the girl.—
"Do you really mean to go to Birmingham?"
"Yes. It's the only thing to do. I can't get in touch with Donnell by telephone, and it wouldn't be safe to send a wire."
"And suppose it's a trap?"
"You can suppose it's what you like. The Saint's clever. But I think I've got the hang of him now. It's just a repetition of that posse joke. He's come to tell us that he's going to get Donnell just because he thinks we won't believe it. And if he does get Donnell, Donnell will squeal. If you've got cold feet you can stay here. But I'm going. Budd can go with me if you don't like it. He'll be more use than you, anyway."
"I'll go with you."
"Have it your own way."
She came back to watch Budd putting the finishing touches to the Saint's roping.
"You'll be pleased to hear," she said, "that for once I'm going to believe you."
"So I heard," said the Saint. "Hope you have a nice journey. Will you leave Dyson to look after me? I'm sure he'd treat me very kindly."
She shook her head.
"Budd," she said, "will be even kinder."
It was a blow at the very foundations of the scheme which the Saint had built up, but not a muscle of his face betrayed his feelings.
He spoke to her as if there were no one else in the room, holding her eyes in spite of herself with that mocking stare of his.
"Jill Trelawney," he said, "you're a fool. If there were degrees in pure, undiluted imbecility I should give you first prize. You're going to Birmingham with Weald. When you get there you're going to walk into a pile of trouble. Weald will be as much use to you as a tin tombstone. Not that the thought worries me, but I'm just telling you now, and I'd like you to remember it afterwards. Before to-night you're going to wish you'd been born with some sort of imitation of a brain. That's all. I shall see you again in Birmingham — don't worry."
She smiled, with a lift of her eyebrows.
"Aren't you thoughtful for me, Simon Templar?"
"We don't mind doing these things for old customers," said the Saint benignly.
He was still looking at her. The bantering gaze of his blue eyes from under the lazily drooping eyelids, the faint smile, the hint of a lilt of laughter in his voice — these things could rarely have been more airily perfect in their mockery.