"She'll come back for her bag," said Teal comfortably. "I'll wait. And while I'm waiting I'd like to see round some of the other rooms in this flat."
Simon Templar pulled himself off the mantelpiece, against which he had been leaning, and looked Teal deliberately in the eyes.
"You won't wait," he said, "because I happen to want to go to bed, and I prefer to see you off the premises first. And you won't search this flat, not on any excuse, because you haven't a search warrant."
Teal stood squarely by the table.
"I have reason to believe," he said, "that you're sheltering a woman who's wanted for murder."
"You haven't a search warrant," repeated the Saint. "Don't be foolish, Teal. I may be a suspicious character, but you've got nothing definite against me, apart from the little show in Paris, which isn't your business — nothing in the wide, wide world. If you try to search this flat I shall resist you by force. What's more, I shall throw you down the stairs and out into the street with such violence that you will bounce from here to Harrod's. And if you try to get me for that, the beak will soak you good and proper. Once upon a time you might have got away with it, but not now. The police aren't so popular these days. You'd better watch your step."
"I can get a warrant," said Teal, "within two hours."
"Then get it," said the Saint shortly. "And don't come in here again bothering me until you've got it in your pocket. Goodnight."
He crossed the room and opened the door, and Teal, after a few seconds of frightful hesitation, passed out into the hall.
Simon opened the front door for him also; and there Teal paused on the threshold.
"You are a bright boy, Saint," said Teal somnolently. "Don't go to bed. I shall be back with that warrant inside two hours."
"Goodnight," said the Saint again, and closed the door in the detective's face.
He came back into the sitting room and found the girl putting her possessions into her bag.
"I heard," she said.
"In five minutes," said the Saint, "Teal will have a man outside this front door to watch the place while he goes off to get a warrant. Meanwhile—"
The shrill, sharp scream of a police whistle sounded in the street outside, and a little smile touched Simon Templar's mouth.
"At this moment," said the Saint, "he's standing on the steps blowing that whistle. He's not taking any chances. He's not going to look for a man — he's going to wait till a man comes to him. He's going to make quite sure that whoever's in here isn't going to slip out behind his back. And the person they want to find here is you."
Jill Trelawney nodded.
"On a charge of murder," she said softly.
Chapter VI
How Simon Templar went to bed,
and Mr. Teal woke up
1
SIMON had slipped out his cigarette case and absently selected a cigarette. He lighted the cigarette, looking at a picture on the opposite wall without seeing it; and his faintly thoughtful smile lingered on the corners of his mouth, rather recklessly and dangerously. But that was like Simon Templar, who never got worked up about anything.
"Of course," he said quietly, "I've been rather liable to overlook that."
"Why not?" she answered, in a tone that matched his own for evenness. "You can't spend twenty-four hours a day thinking and talking about nothing but that."
He shifted his gaze to her face. Her beauty was utterly calm and tranquil. She showed nothing — not in the tremor of a lip, or the flicker of an eyelid. And unless something were done there and then, she might have less than two months of life ahead of her before a paid menial of the law hanged her by the neck…
Teal's whistle, in the street below, shrieked again like a lost soul.
And Jill Trelawney laughed. Not hysterically, not even in bravado. She just laughed. Softly.
She turned back the coat of her plain tweed costume, and he saw a little holster on the broad belt she wore.
"But I've never overlooked it," she said—"not entirely."
Simon came round the table, and his fingers closed on her wrist in a circle of cool steel.
"Not that way," he said.
She met his eyes.
"It's the only way for me," she said. "I've never had a fancy for the Old Bailey — and the crowds — and the black cap. And the three weeks' waiting, in Holloway, with the chaplain coming in like a funeral every day. And the last breakfast — at such an unearthly hour of the morning!" The glimmer in her eyes was one of pure amusement. "No one could possibly make a good dying speech at 8 a.m.," she said.
"You're talking nonsense," said the Saint roughly.
"I'm not," she said. "And you know it. If the worst comes to the worst—"
"It hasn't come to that yet."
"Not yet."
"And it won't, lass — not while I'm around."
She laughed again.
"Simon — really — you're a darling!"
"But have you only just discovered that?" said the Saint.
He made her smile. Even if her laughter had been of neither hysteria nor bravado, it had not been a thing to reassure him. A smile was different. And he still found it easy to make her smile.
But she was of such a very unusual mettle that he could have no peace of mind with her at such a moment. They were very recent partners, and still she was almost a stranger to him. They were familiar friends of a couple of days' standing; and he hardly knew her. In the days of their old enmity he had recognized in her a fearless independence that no man could have lightly undertaken to control — unless he had been insanely vain. And with that fearless independence went an unconscious aloofness. She would follow her own counsel, and never realize that anyone else might consider he had a right to know what that counsel was. That aloofness was utterly unaware — he divined that it had never been in her at all before the days of the Angels of Doom, and when, the work of the Angels of Doom was done it would be. gone.
And Teal's whistle was silent. Simon looked down from a window, and saw that Teal had gone. But a uniformed man stood at the foot of the steps on the pavement outside, and looked up from time to time.
"Well?" said the girl.
"He's gone for his warrant," said the Saint. "Cast your bread upon the waters, and you shall find it after many days. We can thank your Angels of Doom for that. If you hadn't made the police so unpopular, Teal would have risked the search without a warrant. As it is, we've got a few minutes' grace, which may run into two hours. Pardon me."
He went through into the bedroom and selected a coat from his wardrobe. He returned with this, and a pillow from the bed.
"Keep over on that side of the room."
She obeyed, perplexedly. He pushed an armchair over against the window, put the pillow inside the coat he had brought, and sat coat and pillow in the chair.
"Now — where's your hat?"
He found the hat, and propped it up over the coat on a walking stick. Then he carried over a small table and set it beside the chair; and on the table he put a small lamp. After a calculating survey, he switched on the small lamp.
"Now turn out that switch beside you."
She did as she was told; and the only light left in the room came from the small lamp on the table by the armchair against the window.
"The Shadow on the Blind," said the Saint. "A Mystery in Three Acts. Act One."
She looked at him.
"And Act Two — the fire escape?"
He shook his head.
"No. We haven't got one of those. Why not the front door? Are you ready?"
He handed her her bag, went out into the hall, and fetched in her valise. This he opened for her.
"Put on another hat," he said. "You must look ordinary."