The Saint Meets His Match Read Free Page A

cottage on the Yorkshire
moors to take him while he slept. The next day, a
letter signed with the name of the Angels of Doom came
to Scotland Yard and told a story, and the three men
were found and released. But Gallon was not found; and
the tale of the three men, that the room in which they
found him must have been saturated with some odourless
soporific gas, made the commission er’s lip curl. Nor
was he amused when Gallon wrote later from some obscure
South American republic to say that he was quite well,
thanks.
    More than three months
passed, during which the name of the Angels of Doom
grew more menacing every week, and so it came about
that amongst the extensive and really rather prosaic
and monotonous files of the Records Office at Scotland
Yard there arrived one dossier of a totally different type
from its companions. The out side cover was labelled in
a commonplace manner enough, like all the other
dossiers, with a simple name; and this name
was Jill Trelawney. Inside, however, was to be found
a very large section occupying nearly three hun dred
closely written pages, under a subheading which was
anything but commonplace. Indeed, that subheading must
have caused many searchings of heart to the staid member
of the clerical department who had had to type it
out, and must similarly have bothered the man responsi ble
for the cross-indexing of the records, when he had had
to print it neatly on one of his respectable little cards
for the files. For that subheading was “The Angels of Doom,” which Records Office must have felt was a heading far
more suitable for inclusion in a library of sensational
fiction than for a collection of data dealing solely with sober fact.
    How Simon Templar came
upon the scene was another matter—but really quite a simple one. For the Saint
could never resist anything like that. He read of the early exploits of the
Angels of Doom in the rare newspapers that he
took the trouble to peruse, and was interested. Later, he heard further
facts about Jill Trelawney from Chief Inspector
Teal himself, and was even more interested. And the day came when he inveigled Chief Inspector Teal into accepting an invitation to lunch; and
when the detective had been suitably
mellowed by a menu selected with the Saint’s infallible instinct for
luxurious living, the Saint said, casually:
“By the way, Claud Eus tace, do you happen to remember that I was
once invited to join the Special
Branch?”
    And Chief Inspector Teal
removed the eight-inch cigar from his face and blinked—suspiciously.
    “I remember,” he said.
    “And you   remember my   answer?”
    “Not word for word,
but—— ”
    “I refused.”
    Teal nodded.
    “I’ve thought,
since, that perhaps that was one of the kindest
things you ever did for me,” he said.
    The Saint smiled.
    “Then I want you to
take a deep breath and hold on to your socks, Claud Eustace, old okapi,”
he murmured, and the detective looked up.
    “You want to try
it?”    .
    Simon nodded.
    “Just lately,”
he said, “I’ve been feeling an awful urge towards that little den of yours
on the Embankment. I believe I was really born
to be a policeman. As the scourge of ungodliness, I
should be ten times more deadly with an official
position. And there’s one particular case on hand
at the moment which is only waiting for a bloke like me to knock the hell out
of it. Teal, wouldn’t you like to call me
‘Sir’?”
    “I should hate
it,” said Teal.
    But there were others in
Scotland Yard who thought differently.
    For it had long since
been agreed, among the heads of that gloomy organization
of salaried kill-joys which exists for the purposes
of causing traffic jams, suppressing riotous living and
friendly wassail, and discouraging the noble sport of soaking
the ungodly on the boko, that something had
got to be done about the Saint. The only point which up to that time had never
been quite unani mously agreed on
was what exactly was to be done.
    The days had