The Saint Meets his Match (The Saint Series) Read online

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE SAINT

  Enter the Saint (1930), The Saint Closes the Case (1930), The Avenging Saint (1930), Featuring the Saint (1931), Alias the Saint (1931), The Saint Meets His Match (1931), The Saint Versus Scotland Yard (1932), The Saint’s Getaway (1932), The Saint and Mr Teal (1933), The Brighter Buccaneer (1933), The Saint in London (1934), The Saint Intervenes (1934), The Saint Goes On (1934), The Saint in New York (1935), Saint Overboard (1936), The Saint in Action (1937), The Saint Bids Diamonds (1937), The Saint Plays with Fire (1938), Follow the Saint (1938), The Happy Highwayman (1939), The Saint in Miami (1940), The Saint Goes West (1942), The Saint Steps In (1943), The Saint on Guard (1944), The Saint Sees It Through (1946), Call for the Saint (1948), Saint Errant (1948), The Saint in Europe (1953), The Saint on the Spanish Main (1955), The Saint Around the World (1956), Thanks to the Saint (1957), Señor Saint (1958), Saint to the Rescue (1959), Trust the Saint (1962), The Saint in the Sun (1963), Vendetta for the Saint (1964), The Saint on TV (1968), The Saint Returns (1968), The Saint and the Fiction Makers (1968), The Saint Abroad (1969), The Saint in Pursuit (1970), The Saint and the People Importers (1971), Catch the Saint (1975), The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (1976), Send for the Saint (1977), The Saint in Trouble (1978), The Saint and the Templar Treasure (1978), Count On the Saint (1980), Salvage for the Saint (1983)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Interfund (London) Ltd.

  Foreword © 2014 John Peel

  Publication History and Author Biography © 2014 Ian Dickerson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477842669

  ISBN-10: 1477842667

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  To Hugh Clevely

  London, 1931

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  CHAPTER ONE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR MET JILL TRELAWNEY AND THERE WAS SKYLARKING AND SONG IN BELGRAVE

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  CHAPTER TWO: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WAS DISTURBED AND THERE WAS FURTHER BADINAGE IN BELGRAVE STREET

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  CHAPTER THREE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR MADE A SLIGHT ERROR AND PINKY BUDD MADE A BIG ONE

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  CHAPTER FOUR: HOW JILL TRELAWNEY TOLD A LIE AND SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

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  CHAPTER FIVE: HOW LORD ESSENDEN WAS PEEVED AND SIMON TEMPLAR RECEIVED A VISITOR

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  CHAPTER SIX: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WENT TO BED AND MR TEAL WOKE UP

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  CHAPTER SEVEN: HOW JILL TRELAWNEY KEPT AN APPOINTMENT AND SIMON TEMPLAR WENT PADDLING

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  CHAPTER EIGHT: HOW JILL TRELAWNEY MADE A SLIP AND THERE WAS A LOT MORE PADDLING AND GENERAL MERRIMENT

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  CHAPTER NINE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR KISSED JILL TRELAWNEY AND MR TEAL WAS RUDE TO MR CULLIS

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  CHAPTER TEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE OF BIRD’S – NESTING AND DUODECIMO GUGLIEMI ALSO BECAME

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR INTERRUPTED A PARTY AND MR CULLIS WAS AT HOME

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  CHAPTER TWELVE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WENT HOME AND CHIEF INSPECTOR TEAL DID

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR SURRENDERED AND CHIEF INSPECTOR TEAL WAS NOT HELPFUL

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR PUT ON HIS HAT

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  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF THE SAINT!

  THE SAINT CLUB

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original edition and includes vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation that might differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, allowing only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  Like so many of my generation, I was introduced to the Saint through the TV series that starred Roger Moore. This show was a huge success in England, America, and around the world, and Robert Baker, the show’s producer, credited this to three things: “Roger Moore, Roger Moore, and Roger Moore.” In many respects, this was quite true—the series made Roger Moore a household name (who recalls he was Ivanhoe or one of the Maverick clan before this?), and the show was immensely popular for years.

  And then I discovered something: the series was based on a number of books. Something to read until the next new episode came on! I found that many of the episodes were, in fact, taken from original stories penned by Leslie Charteris, the Saint’s creator. And then came the greatest discovery of all: there was an earlier Saint, one who was quite different from the charming, sophisticated crime-fighter so ably personified by Roger Moore. This earlier Saint was still charming and sophisticated, but he was something else, also—he was sly, he thumbed his nose at authority, and he was, not to mince words, a criminal. He stole. He had a gang. He even killed people he thought the world would be better off without.

  And he was utterly captivating.

  This early Saint didn’t last long—in fact, the book you’re now reading is the transition point, where he’s dabbling with becoming respectable (and failing miserably)—but he’s one of the most fun characters in all of literature. Meet—the Tiger! (1928) introduced the readers to Simon Templar (and to the delightful Patricia Holm—I never forgave Charteris for writing her out of the series), and the Saint was off and running. He was an immediate hit with the reading public, and when you read this book it isn’t difficult to see why this should be so.

  The Saint was by no means the first anti-hero who fought crime his own way. Raffles (created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung) was a gentleman burglar who was in some ways quite similar to the Saint. And crime fighters who broke the letter of the law for the greater good were quite familiar from the works of the prolific Edgar Wallace (The Four Just Men of 1909 being a prime example). Wallace even introduced irony into his characters, such as Mr. J. G. Reeder, who apologetically explains he can catch criminals because he possesses a criminal mind himself.

  But the Saint was something fresh and breezy, with a cheerful lunacy all of his own. Spiderman wasn’t the first hero to crack wise as he battled the bad guys—Simon Templar made an art of being irreverent, especially in the face of sudden death. He might even sing Gilbert and Sullivan songs on his way to do battle. The one thing he will never, ever do is to take himself—or other people—seriously. He mispronounces names or gives out gloriously silly nicknames to everyone (long-suffering Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is “Claud Useless,” for example).

  And Charteris treats the whole affair in exactly the same vein. He gives frequent asides to his readers, such a
s: “The replies he received have no place in a highly moral and uplifting story like this.” While the line is funny in and of itself, it’s even funnier that Charteris might pretend that any Saint book is either moral or uplifting, and the readers know this. Charteris invites the readers into the story and drags them along (quite willingly) with him.

  And then there are the other characters in the stories. Sadly, the Saint’s gang isn’t involved in this adventure, but they’re gloriously to the fore in previous volumes (especially in The Saint Closes the Case and The Avenging Saint). Patricia Holm is one of the great early female characters in fiction—she’s a match for the Saint in many respects and the love of his (early) life. Unlike many female leads of the day, Patricia is as likely to pick up a gun and shoot the villain as any man. She’s also (very flagrantly and shockingly for the day) happy enough to live in sin with Simon. She’s missing from this tale primarily because she’d clash with our leading lady, Jill Trelawney.

  Jill is a heroine in Pat’s image—she kills one of the chief villains herself without hesitation—and the title for this book, The Saint Meets His Match, tells you her standing. She’s introduced as a criminal mastermind, but as the story progresses we discover that she’s nothing that simple. In a day when the ladies were supposed to be meek and decorative, Jill is as cheerfully different as the Saint himself.

  This book, happily, does include one of the great characters from the Saint series—Claud Eustace Teal himself. (And one of the best things the TV series did was to cast Ivor Dean in the role, as he is exactly how you picture Teal when you read the stories.) Teal is not a dumb cop—quite the contrary, as Charteris frequently points out, he’s an incredibly good cop. He acts as if he’s lazy and uninvolved, but he has a mind like a bear trap and woe betide any criminal who gets in his sights.

  Well, any criminal who isn’t the Saint. It is Teal’s constant frustration that he knows the Saint is guilty of many a crime—but can’t prove it. (And the one he can prove, Simon gets a royal pardon for committing!) Teal and the Saint are brilliant opposites—Teal the man of law and order who plods carefully from one bit of evidence to the next, Simon the intuitive genius who plays hunches and trusts in his luck and audacity. Small wonder that they are, though neither would admit it, friends. (Though Teal would arrest the Saint in a heartbeat if he could just, somehow, get the evidence he needs…)

  But it is, as always, the Saint himself who is the star of these adventures. Simon is a delightful, engaging character who has set a simple goal for himself: “The righting of injustice, the strafing of the ungodly, and the succouring of a damsel in distress.” We’re never given his back story—we never do find out why he should have decided that this was his life’s task—but there his is. He’s a Brighter Buccaneer, a Happy Highwayman, a man about town who enjoys everything with a tremendous zest for life. And he’s always ready to lay his life on the line for a cause he believes in. There’s always a cigarette between his smiling lips, a drink at hand, and a pretty girl close by. There’s always action, and a villain to defeat, and deadly danger at a second’s notice.

  There is always—the Saint.

  —John Peel

  CHAPTER ONE:

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR MET JILL TRELAWNEY AND THERE WAS SKYLARKING AND SONG IN BELGRAVE

  1

  The big car had been sliding through the night like a great black slug with wide, flaming eyes that seared the road and carved a blazing tunnel of light through the darkness under the overarching trees, and then the eyes were suddenly blinded, and the smooth pace of the slug grew slower and slower until it groped to a shadowy standstill under the hedge.

  The man who had watched its approach, sitting under a tree, with the glowing end of his cigarette carefully shielded in his cupped hands, stretched silently to his feet. The car had stopped only a few yards from him, as he had expected. He stooped and trod his cigarette into the grass, and came down to the road without a sound. There was no sound at all except the murmur of leaves in the night air, for the subdued hiss of the car’s eight cylinders had ceased.

  Momentarily, inside the car, a match flared up, revealing everything there with a startling clearness.

  The rich crimson upholstery, the handful of perfect roses in the crystal bracket, the gleaming silver fittings—those might have been imagined from the exterior. So also, perhaps, might have been imagined the man with the battered face who wore a chauffeur’s livery, or the rather vacantly good-looking man who sat alone in the back, with his light overcoat swept back from his spotless white shirt-front, and his silk hat on the seat beside him. Or, perhaps, the girl…

  Or perhaps not the girl.

  The light of the match focused the attention upon her particularly, for she was using it to light a cigarette. On the face of it, of course, she was exactly what one would have looked for. On the face of it, she was the kind of girl who goes very well with an expensive car, and there was really no reason why she should not be sitting at the wheel. On the face of it…

  But there was something about her that put superficial judgments uneasily in the wrong. Tall she must have been, guessed the man who watched her from the shadows, and of a willowy slenderness that still left her a woman. And beautiful she was beyond dispute, with a perfectly natural beauty which, yet had in it nothing of the commonplace. Her face was all her own, as was the cornfield gold of her hair. And no artifice known to the deceptions of women could have given her those tawny-golden eyes…

  “So you’re Jill Trelawney!” thought the man in the shadows.

  The light was extinguished as he thought it, but he carried every detail of the picture it had shown indelibly photographed on his brain. This was a living photograph. He had been given mere camera portraits of her before—some of them were in his pocket at that moment—but they were pale and insignificant things beside the memory of the reality, and he wondered dimly at the impertinence which presumed to try to capture such a face in dispassionate half-tone.

  “On the face of it—hell!” thought the man in the shadows.

  But in the car, the man in evening dress said, more elegantly, “You’re an extraordinary woman, Jill. Every time I see you—”

  “You get more maudlin,” the girl took him up calmly. “This is work—not a mothers’ meeting.”

  The man in evening dress grunted querulously.

  “I don’t see why you have to be so snappy, Jill. We’re all in the same boat—”

  “I’ve yet to sail in a sauce-boat, Weald.”

  The end of her cigarette glowed more brightly as she inhaled, and darkened again in an uncontested silence. Then the man with the battered face said, diffidently, “As long as Templar isn’t around—”

  “Templar!” The girl’s voice cut in on the name like the crack of a whip. “Templar!” she said scathingly. “What are you trying to do, Pinky? Scare me? That man’s a bee in your bonnet—”

  “The Saint,” said the man with the battered face diffidently, “would be a bee in anybody’s bonnet what was up against him. See?”

  If there had been a light, he would have been seen to be blushing. Mr Budd always blushed when anyone spoke to him sharply. It was this weakness that had given him the nickname of “Pinky.”

  “There’s a story,” ventured the man in evening dress, but he got no further.

  “Isn’t there always a story about any fancy dick?” demanded the girl scornfully. “I suppose you’ve never heard a story about Henderson—or Peters—or Teal—or Bill Kennedy? Who is this man Templar, anyway?”

  “Ever seen a man pick up another man fifty pounds above his weight ’n’ heave him over a six-foot wall like he was a sack of feathers?” asked Mr Budd, in his diffident way. “Templar does that as a kind of warming-up exercise for a real fight. Ever seen a man stick a visiting-card up edgeways ’n’ cut it in half with a knife at fifteen paces? Templar does that standing on his head with his eyes shut. Ever seen a man take all the punishment six hoodlums can hand out to him �
��n’ come back smiling to qualify the whole half-dozen for an ambulance ride? Templar—”

  “Frightened of him, Pinky?” inquired the girl quietly.

  Mr Budd sniffed.

  “I been sparring partner—which is the same as saying human punch-bag—to some of the best heavyweights whatever stepped into a ring,” he answered, “but I always been paid handsome for the hidings I’ve took. I don’t expect the Saint ’ud be ready to pay so much for the pleasure of beating me up. See?”

  Mr Budd did not add that since his sparring-partner days he had seen service in Chicago with “Blinder” Kellory and other gang leaders almost as notorious—men who shot on sight and asked questions at the inquest. He had acquitted himself with distinction in Kellory’s “war” with “Scarface” Al Capone—and he said nothing about that, either. There was a peculiarly impressive quality about his reticence.

  “Nobody’s gonna say I’m frightened to fight anybody,” said Mr Budd pinkly, “but that don’t stop me knowing when I’m gonna be licked. See?”

  “If you take my advice, Jill,” yapped the man in evening dress, “you’ll settle with Templar before he gets the chance to do any mischief. It ought to be easy—”

  The man in the shadows shook with a chuckle of pure amusement. It was a warm evening, and all the windows of the car were open. He could hear every word that was said. He was standing so near the car that he could have taken a pace forward, reached out a hand, and touched it. But he took two paces forward.

  The girl said, with cool contempt, as though she were dealing with a sulky child, “If it’ll make you feel any happier to have him fixed—”

  “It would,” said Stephen Weald shamelessly. “I know there are always stories, but the stories I’ve heard about the Saint don’t make me happy. He’s uncanny. They say—”

  The words were strangled in his throat in a kind of sob, so that the other two looked at him quickly, though they could not have made out his face in the gloom. But the girl saw, in an instant, what Weald had seen—the deeper shadow that had blacked out the grey square of one window.