The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"Need we have any more of that?" asked Teal wearily. "I'm tired of being told I ought to arrest him. I'm tired of explaining that we can't do anything against him in England for robbing Essenden in Paris. And I'm tired of explaining that you can suspect what you like about him and Jill having been at Essenden's the night Essen­den disappeared. But you can't prove anything, and Simon Templar knows it. He can admit anything he likes in private conversations with me, but that evidence dis­appears the moment I walk out into the street again. He's made a fool of me once, and I'm not going to give him the chance of making a fool of me again by charging me with unlawful arrest. Don't you know that the Saint has never yet been inside?" he added.

"With his record?"

"He hasn't got a record," said Teal. "He's a suspi­cious character, and an absconding policeman, but that's the worst you can say about him without paying damages for slander—except for that affair in Paris, which we can't do anything about. Once upon a time there were other things we could have held him for, but he got a pardon and wiped all those out. Heavens above, sir," Teal broke out in a kind of helpless exasperation, "haven't I spent years of my life trying to find something I could put on the Saint? I've had men he's beaten up, in the old days, and he's told me himself he did it, and I couldn't make one of them say a word against him—not a word we could have acted on, I mean. I've had the Saint on the run, once, with a bundle of evidence against him all tied up in my office and a real warrant in my pocket, and then he went and saved a royal train and had all his sins forgiven. I've stood and watched him blow a man to blazes, and I haven't been able to prove it to this day. I'm not a miracle man, and I'm not even a convinc­ing liar. I'll tell the world the Saint has beaten me in every game I know and some I'd never heard of before I met him, and I'll try to smile while I'm saying it. But I won't even try to tell a deaf-and-dumb half-wit that I could pull the Saint in to-morrow and have him sent down for so much as seven days in the second division, be­cause I know all I should get would be the horse laugh."

"But he's known to be an associate of Trelawney's."

"And what then?"

"He was Trelawney's accomplice at Essenden's."

"Accomplice?" queried Teal patiently.

"He was with her. He must know where she's hiding now."