The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

This annoyed Teal, because he was unable to find any trace of the principal actors in the mystery. And even a minor scapegoat would have been better than none.

He went down through the wine cellar and found the flooded cave. When the waters had subsided, an extensive search was made with electric torches, but still the extent of the cavern and the source of its strange subterranean tides could not be discovered. And no human eyes ever saw Lord Essenden again.

It was late the following afternoon when a sleepless, but not more than ordinarily sleepy, Chief Inspector Teal returned to Scotland Yard to prepare his report .

"I don't suppose Essenden will ever be seen again," he told the assistant commissioner gloomily.

"He was murdered, of course?"

"Probably he was. But how are we ever going to prove that if we can't produce a body? You know the law as well as I do."

Cullis rasped his chin.

"Waldstein first, then Essenden. There must be a con­necting link somewhere."

"Of course there is. Trelawney believes that her father was framed, and she's out to get the men who did it. Her idea is that there was a ring of first-class crooks work­ing in with an accomplice right inside this building. Sir Francis Trelawney was the man they wanted here, though —and they couldn't get him. What was more, he was get­ting hotter on their trail every day. So he had to go. He was framed, with the help of their police accomplice; and we know the rest. That's her story, and somehow or other she's made the Saint believe it."

"But that's ridiculous! There were only two people concerned in the show that really put the finger on Sir Francis Trelawney. The chief commissioner was one, and I was the other. I told Templar the story myself. If you're suggesting that one of us was taking graft from Waldstein——"

"I'm suggesting nothing," said Teal. "I'm just telling you the tale we're up against."

Cullis frowned.

"It's a tale that's making more trouble for us than we've had for years—there was another leading article in the Record this evening," he said sourly. "Something has got to be done about it, or the chief will be wanting resignations all round. If there's anything at all on Tre­lawney's side, there'll be a clue to it in the Record's Office somewhere—if we can only find it."

Teal nodded.