She saw the light beyond the door of a room farther down the hall and urged him towards it. He led on, helplessly, his hands held high above his head, back into the room he had just left.
In the centre of the room she stopped him and flung a glance over her shoulder at the bound figure in the corner.
"Hullo, Saint!" she said.
2
Simon Templar smiled with his lips and his one visible eye.
"Hullo, Jill!" he murmured. "And how have you been keeping all these years?"
The girl backed towards him, still covering Essenden with her little gun; and there was a knife in her left hand. The Saint turned over, and Jill stooped and hacked swiftly and accurately at the cords that held him. In a moment he was free, scrambling to his feet and stretching himself.
"That's better," he remarked. "Brother Matthew has efficient but violent ideas on the subject of roping people. Pull the knots as tight as you can without breaking the rope — that's Matthew. Very sound, but uncomfortable for the victim. However, here we are…"
He was dusting his coat. It was really a very respectable coat, when he brushed off the shabbiness which he had applied with French chalk. The enormous boots, removed, disclosed a neat pair of shoes worn beneath them. The horribly striped socks were dummies, which he unbuttoned and put in his pocket. The red choker, removed also, proved that the impression it conveyed at first sight was false: he actually wore shirt, collar, and tie underneath it, and all three were quietly elegant. Before Essenden's staring eyes, he slipped off the very purple cap and the eyeshade, wiped the blue make-up from his chin with his handkerchief, and so ceased to bear the slightest resemblance to Albert George.
"An ingenious device," he said, "to divide the enemy's camp. But not, to tell you the truth, original. None the less useful for that."