The Saint Meets His Match (6 page)

“The story?”

“Police plans were
leaking out; raids falling flat regularly. Something had to be done. The chief
commissioner
took a chance on myself and another
superintendent—
we had the longest service records—and
arranged for us to
lead a surprise raid on a Thursday
night. On Thursday
morning he let it get round the Yard
that the raid was
to take place on Saturday. We raided
on Thursday with
out any fuss, roped in a gang that had
slipped us twice
before, and kept everyone on the
premises—including
the men who made the raid, and they
were officially sup
posed to be on leave. Therefore there was
nobody left at the Yard, except the chief, who knew that the raid was over. We
had one man sitting over the telephone and
another
over the letter box. First post on Friday morning,
a
letter came in. Just one word, typewritten:
Saturday.
It was on official paper, with the heading cut off, and the
experts put it under the microscope and traced it to the
typewriter in Trelawney’s office.”

“Which anyone might
have used.”

“It was postmarked
Windsor. Trelawney went down to
Windsor for a consultation
on Thursday afternoon—and
he went alone.”

“Flimsy,” said
the Saint. “An accomplice might have
posted
it.”

Cullis nodded.

“I know it wasn’t any
good by itself. But it was a clue.
Nobody saw the
letter but the chief and myself. We
watched Trelawney
ourselves. We were after Waldstein
then. He was always slippery, and at
that time we reck
oned he was vanishing an
average of one girl a week through the Pan-European Concert Agency, which was
one of his most profitable incarnations. But he
was clever,
and he never appeared in
person, and there was never a line of evidence. Then I had the inspiration. I
suggested
to the chief that he go to
Trelawney with the story that
one of Waldstein’s men had squealed. He
saw the point, and agreed. He told the tale of Trelawney, as he’d naturally
have told him anything else in the way of business
that he was pleased about. Waldstein was in Paris, and
the chief said that the S
û
ret
é
had arranged to
intercept
any letters, telegrams, or
telephone calls addressed to him,
so
that no one could warn him, and one of our men was
going over to arrest
him the next morning. And the next morning, bright and early, Trelawney
chartered a special
a
ë
roplane and set off for Paris.”

“No!”

“He did. The chief and I, having been
waiting for just
that, chased him in a
faster a
ë
roplane, and trailed him all
the way from Le Bourget to Waldstein’s hotel. Then,
when we’d heard him ask for Waldstein
at the office, the
chief tapped him on
the shoulder.”

“And?”

“He’d got his story
pat. Gosh, I’ve never met such a
nerve! He just blinked a
bit when he first saw the chief
and me, but from then on
he never batted an eyelid. We
went into a private room,
and the chief told him the
game was up.

” ‘What game?’ asked
Trelawney.

” ‘What are you doing
here?’ asked the chief.

” ‘What you told me to do,’ says
Trelawney.

” ‘I never told you
to come here,’ says the chief.

“The chief says
Trelawney went a bit white then, but
I never noticed it.
Anyway, Trelawney’s story was that he’d been called up by the chief early that
morning and
told to go over and attend to
Waldstein himself, as there
was some difficulty with
the French police, and Waldstein
was likely to get away
during the argument. We asked
him why he hadn’t gone to
the Quai d’Orsay first, to
present his papers, and he
said the chief had told him to
get Waldstein first and
argue afterwards.”

“Well?”

Cullis shrugged.

“After that, it was all over.”

“Don’t see it,”
said the Saint. “If Trelawney was guilty, why should he tell that story to
the very man who would
know at once that it
wasn’t true?”

“Brains,” said
the assistant commissioner. “He’d
thought
out the possibility of being caught, and he’d
got
his defense ready—a frame-up. That story was the best
he could have told. It
prepared his ground for when we opened his safe deposit and found, among
others, bank
notes that were traced to
Waldstein.”

“How did he account
for those?”

“He couldn’t.”

“And
afterwards?”

“The chief decided not to make a public
scandal of it.
For one thing, it would have
been difficult to get a convic
tion,
even on that evidence, because we couldn’t bring
Waldstein into it.
Waldstein, in the eyes of the ignorant
world,
was a perfectly respectable citizen and is the same to this day. So there
wasn’t any lawful reason why he
shouldn’t have given Trelawney money.
Still, Trelawney
was asked for his
resignation, and he died a month after
wards. I don’t like thinking
about that part of it—it isn’t
pleasant to
think that I was indirectly responsible, even
if he was a grafter.”

Simon reached for an ashtray.

“And yet,” he
said, “it seems rather a fluke. Why should
Waldstein
have been the right bait? And why should
Trelawney
have walked into the trap so easily?”

Cullis shrugged again.

“Waldstein was the sort of man who might
have been
the right bait. We took a chance.
If it had failed, we’d
have had to
think of something else. But if Waldstein was
the right bait, Trelawney was bound to walk into the
trap. If a man takes graft, he can’t let his
clients down; if he does, they can squeal on him. Waldstein being in
Paris put Trelawney in a tight corner, but he had
to take
his chance. He didn’t know
how big a chance it was.
Ordinarily,
you see, he might easily have got away with
it. But he didn’t know that there was already some sort
of evidence against him; he didn’t know he was
being
followed; and he couldn’t have
guessed that there could
be enough
suspicion to lead to the opening of his safe
deposit.”

“Had he any particular
enemies?”

“No more than the
average successful policeman.”

“No name you can
remember hearing him mention?”

Cullis tugged at an
iron-grey moustache.

“Heavens! I don’t
know!”

“No one of the name
of—Essenden?”

It was a shot in the dark, but it creased two
additional
wrinkles into the assistant
commissioner’s lined forehead.

“What made you think
of that?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” said
the Saint. “It just fell out of the blue.
But
Jill was on her way to Essenden’s when I first met her,
and that was the first time the Angels have been seen out
before
an arrest.
Get me?”

“But they were there
to cover Dyson. Surely it’s reason
able for them to
have realized that it’s easier to prevent
a
man being arrested than to get him away after the
arrest?”

Simon nodded.

“I know. Still, I’m keeping an open
mind.”

He continued in communion
with his open mind for
some time after the
commissioner had left—and went to
bed with the mind,
if possible, more open than before.

Perhaps Sir Francis
Trelawney had been framed. Per
haps he had not been
framed. If he had been framed, it
had been
brilliantly done. If he had not been framed …
Well,
it was quite natural that a girl like Jill Trelawney,
as
he estimated her, might refuse to believe it. And, either
way, if you looked at it from the standpoint of a law-
abiding
citizen and an incipient policeman to boot, the
rights and wrongs of the Trelawney case made no differ
ence to the rights and wrongs of Jill.

Within the past five
months, a complete dozen of valu
able prisoners had been
rescued from under the very
arms of the law, long as those arms were
traditionally
reputed to be; and the manner
of their rescue, in every
case,
betrayed such an exhaustive knowledge of police
methods and routine that at times a complete reorganization of the
Criminal Investigation Department’s system seemed to be the only possible
alternative to impotent
surrender.
And this, as is the way of such things, accurate
ly coincided with one of those waves of police unpopu
larity and hysterical newspaper criticism which
make com
missioners and
superintendents acidulated and old before
their time. Clearly, it could not go on. The newspapers
said so, and therefore it must have been so. And
the Saint
understood quite calmly and contentedly that, after the
matter in which the Saint had made his debut as a
law-
abiding citizen, either the Angels of Doom or Simon
Templar had got to come to a sudden and sticky end.

Completely comprehending
this salient fact, the Saint
drank his breakfast coffee
black the next morning, and
sent the milk bottle from
outside his front door to an analyst. He had the report by lunchtime.

“At least,” he
told Cullis, “I’m collecting the makings of a case against the
Angels.”

“There was nothing
against them before,” assented the
commissioner
sarcastically.

Simon shook his head.
        

“There wasn’t. Assaulting the police,
obstructing the
police—I tell you, in spite
of everything, you could only
have
got them on minor charges. But attempted mur
der——
”

“Or even real murder,” said Cullis
cheerfully.

2

“Slinky” Dyson had squealed. Simon
Templar had to
admit that nothing but that
happy windfall had enabled him to step so promptly upon the tail of the Angels
of
Doom. Slinky was pulled sin for
suspicious loitering one
evening,
and when they searched him they found on his
person a compact leather wallet containing tools which
were held to be house-breaking implements within
the
meaning of the Act. Simon
happened to be in Marlborough
Street
police station at the time, and witnessed the
discovery.

“I was waiting for a
friend,” said Slinky. “Honest I
was.”

“Honest you may have
was,” said the inspector heavily.
“But
you grew out of that years ago.”

Shortly after Slinky had
been locked up, he asked to
speak to the inspector
again, and the inspector thought
the squeal sufficiently
promising to fetch Teal in to hear
it. And then Teal
sent in the Saint.

“I told you I was
waiting for a friend,” said Slinky,
“and
that’s gospel. But if you’d pulled me to-morrow
…
I was going down to take a look at Lord Essenden’s
party. I had a tip from the Angels. You’ll find
the letter
in my room–I put it in
the Bible on the shelf over the
bed.
They said I was to take what I liked, how I liked, and they’d see I made a good
getaway. Now, you ain’t
told me why
I’m here, but I know. There’s been a scream.
I don’t know why they should want to shop me, but
there’s been a scream… . An’ I’d take is as a
favour, sir,
if you’d tell me who was
the screamer.”

“I don’t know,”
said the Saint truthfully. “Maybe you
talk
in your sleep.”

They found the letter as
Slinky had said they would
find it, and it was short
and to the point.

And the Saint, acting upon
it, went to Lord .Essenden’s
party unknown to Lord
Essenden, and thus met Jill Trelawney and Stephen Weald and Pinky Budd; and
what
followed we know.