"I'm going to collect Donnell and fill the party," he said. "We policemen have our jobs to hold down. D'you mind?"
Then he went on his way. He seemed totally unconscious of having performed any personal service for the girl, and he utterly ignored the sequel to the situation into which a hackneyed convention might pardonably have lured any other man. That sublimely bland indifference would have been as good as a blow between the eyes to anyone but Jill Trelawney. He went on up the stairs carrying Weald. He heard the girl following behind him; but she did not speak, and Simon appeared to take no notice of her presence.
And thus he stepped through the open cupboard, and found Harry Donnell waiting for him on the other side of a Colt.
Simon stood quite still.
Then—
"It's all right, Donnell," spoke the girl. "I've got him covered."
She was standing behind the Saint, so that Simon and his burden practically hid her. Donnell could not see the gun with which she was supposed to be covering the Saint, for her hand was behind Simon's back, but Donnell believed, and lowered his own gun.
The Saint felt only the gentle and significant pressure of the girl's open hand in the small of his back, and understood.
"Go on," said Jill Trelawny.
Simon advanced obediently.
The movement brought him right up to Harry Donell, who stood with his revolver lowered to the full length of a loose arm. There was only the width of Weald's body between them.
Simon relaxed his hold suddenly and dropped Weald unceremoniously to the floor; and then he hit Donnell accurately on the joint of the jaw.
Donnell went down, and the Saint was on him in a flash, wrenching the revolver out of his hand.
And then, as the Saint rose again, he laughed — a laugh of sheer delight.
"You know, Jill, the only real trouble about this game of ours is that it's too darned easy," he said; and there was a new note in his voice which she had never heard before, that made her look at him in a strange puzzlement and surprise.
3
But still for a moment the Saint seemed egotistically oblivious of every angle on the situation except his own. The gun he had taken covered Harry Donnell, who was crawling dazedly up to his feet; and the Saint had backed away to the table and was propping himself against it. His cigarette case clicked open, and a cigarette flicked into his mouth; his lighter flared, and a cloud of smoke drifted up through the gloom; he had his own private satisfaction. And Jill Trelawney said: "I suppose I ought "to thank you…"
The Saint tilted his head.
"Why?" he inquired blankly.
"You know why."
Simon shrugged — an elaborate shrug.
"I hope it will be a lesson to you," he said solemnly. "You must be more careful about the company you keep. Oh, and thanks for helping me to get Harry," said the Saint incidentally. "What made you do that?"
She looked at him.
"I thought it might go a little way towards settling the debt."
"So that we could start fighting again — all square?.. Yes, I should think we can call it quits."
"I suppose you'd like to take my gun?"
"Please."
She was fumbling in her bag, and the Saint was not watching her. He was smoking his cigarette and beaming with an infuriating smugness at Harry Donnell. About two seconds ago, his own weird intuition had raised an eyelid and wrinkled a thin hairline of clairvoyant light across his brain; and he knew exactly what was going to happen. There was just one little thing left that had to happen before the adventure took the twist that it had always been destined to take. And the Saint was not bothered about it at all, for he had his immoral views on these matters of private business. He had taken no further notice of Weald since he had dropped him to the floor. He had not even troubled to search Weald's pockets. And when he turned his head at the sound of the shot, he saw the automatic half-out of Weald's pocket, and the man lying still, and turned again to smile at another gun.
"Don't move," said Jill Trelawney quietly, and the Saint shook his head.
"Jill, you really mustn't commit murder in the presence of respectable policemen. If it happens again—"
"Never mind that," said the girl curtly.
"Oh, but I do," said the Saint. "May I smoke, or would you prefer to dance?"
The girl leaned against the wall, one hand on her hip, and the shining little nickelled automatic in the other.
"Your nerves are good, Simon Templar," she remarked coolly.
"I can say the same for yours."
She regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
"I suppose," she said, "it wouldn't be any use pleading that I shot Weald to save trouble? You can see that he was drawing when I fired. And saving the life of a valuable detective… Would it be any use?"
"Not much, I'm afraid," answered the Saint, in the same tone. "You see, I've got a gun myself, and there wasn't really any call for you to butt in. You just had to say 'Oi!'—and I would have done the work. Besides, Harry would just love to be a witness for the Crown — wouldn't you, Harry?"
He saw the venomous darkening of Donnell's eyes, and laughed.
"I'm sure you would, Harry — being the four-flushing skunk you are."
He had not moved from the table, and his right hand, holding Donnell's revolver, still rested loosely on his knee.
"You aren't going to be troublesome, Templar?" asked the girl gently, and Simon shrugged.
"You don't get me, Jill. Personally, I'm never troublesome." He held her eyes. "Others may be," he said.
The silence after he spoke was significant; and the girl listened on. And she also heard, outside, the sound of heavy hurrying footsteps on the stairs.
"Excuse me," said the Saint.
He stepped quickly to the door, and turned the key in the lock. Then he picked the table up and jammed it into the defense for ballast, with one edge under the handle of the door and the other slanting into the floor.
"That'll hold Donnell's boys for three or four minutes," he said.
She smiled.
"While I slip out through the tunnel?"
"While we slip out through the tunnel."
He saw the perplexity that narrowed her eyes, the hesitant parting of her lips, but he saw these things only in a sidelong glimpse as he crossed to the side of Harry Donnell. And he saw the vindictive resignation that twisted Donnell's mouth, and laughed.
"Sorry to trouble you again," said the Saint.
His fist shot up like the hoof of a plunging cayuse. But this time the Saint had had one essential fraction of a second more in which to meditate his manoeuvre — and that made all the difference in the world. And this time Donnell went down and stayed down in a peaceful sleep.
"Which is O. K.," drawled the Saint, after one professional glance at the sleeper.
He turned briskly.
"Are you all set for the fade-away, Jill? Want to powder your nose or anything first?"
She was still staring at him. The new atmosphere that had crept into his personality from the moment of his first swipe at Donnell's jaw had grown up like the strengthening light of an incredible dawn, and the intervening interlude had merely provided circumstances to shape its course without altering its temper in the least. And the gun that she had been levelling at him half the time had made no difference at all.
"Aren't you going to try to arrest me?" she asked, with a faint rasp of contempt laid like the thinnest veneer on the bewildering beginnings of preposterous understanding that lay beneath.
And Simon Templar smiled at her.
"Arrest you for ferreting out and bumping off the bloke I've been wanting to get at myself for years? Jill, darling, you have some odd ideas about me!.. But there really is a posse around this time — they're waiting at the other end of that there rat's hole, with the assistant commissioner himself in command, and you wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting through alone. D'you mind if I take over the artillery a moment?"