The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"If you don't mean to talk turkey," she said, "you don't have to give me applesauce. I'm not a fish."

"O.K., baby. But how much of that cache did you get through before Cullis butted in?"

She was lighting a cigarette from the case he handed her, and she shook her head ruefully over the match.

"I didn't get through any of it," she said. "It was just a waste of time finding it. The door behind me and the false top in the desk must have opened just about simul­taneously. There was a despatch box, and I think there were one or two odd papers underneath; that's all I saw before the fun started. It was hearing you outside that beat me. If that hadn't made me decide that the tall tim­ber was the best next stop for Little Girl, I'd probably have lifted anything I could see and hoped I'd get some­thing good."

"It wouldn't have helped you much," said the Saint. "There can't be many documents in existence that would incriminate Cullis, and it would have been a thousand to one against your collecting the right ones in your -handful."

"And now," said the girl bitterly, "if there ever were any incriminating papers in that cache, he'll have them out and burn them before he goes to bed tonight. He won't take a second chance with me."

Simon shrugged.

"Why should he ever have taken a chance at all?"

"It's the way of a man like that," said Jill. "He may have wanted to gloat over them in private. Or he may have just kept them for "curiosities."

Simon was steering the two-seater round the big one­way triangle at Hyde Park Corners, and he did not answer at once.

Then he said: "I wonder what incriminating papers there might, have been."

"So do I. ... But to-night's work may put the wind up him a bit more, which is something."

The Saint drove on in silence for a while, and his next remark came as a bolt from the blue.

"Would you object to being arrested?" he asked.

She looked at him.

"I think I should be inclined to object," she said. "Why?"

"Just part of that idea I mentioned recently," said the Saint. "I'll think it out more elaborately overnight, and tell you the whole scheme to-morrow if I think there's anything in it."

She had to be content with that. The air of mystery which had been exasperating her so much of late had somehow grown deeper than ever that night, and he was very taciturn all the rest of the way to Chelsea.

He left her at the studio, and would not even come in for a last drink and cigarette before he went home.