The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

"I tell you, Cullis, I'm scared——"

Cullis nodded.

"They certainly seem to have it in for you," he said. "I wonder why? Good-evening!"

Essenden felt his hand vigorously shaken, and then he found himself in the stone corridor outside, blinking at a closed door.

He went downstairs and wrote out his formal report, as he had been directed, but with a querulous lack of restraint which spoilt the product as a literary effort. Then he drove to his club and dined and wined himself well before he returned to his waiting car and directed a cold and sleepy chauffeur to take him home.

"Home" was on the borders of Oxfordshire, for Essen-den preferred to live away from the social life of London. Lady Essenden had objections to this misanthropy, of which Lord Essenden took no notice. In his way, he was almost as retiring a character as Mr. Cullis.

Through all that drive home, Lord Essenden sat un­comfortably upright in one corner of his car, sucking the knob of his umbrella and pondering unpleasant thoughts.

It was after midnight when he arrived, and the foot­man who opened the door informed him that Lady Essenden had gone to bed with a headache two hours earlier.

Essenden nodded and handed over his hat and coat. In exchange, he received one solitary letter, and the handwriting on the envelope was so familiar that he car­ried it to his study to open behind a locked door. The letter contained in the envelope was not so surprising to him as it would have been a month before:

 

Have a look at the safe behind the dummy row in your bookcase.

 

And underneath were the replicas of the two drawings that he had seen before.

Essenden struck a match and watched the paper curl and blacken in an ashtray. Then, with a perfectly impassive fatalism, he went to the bookcase and slid back the panel which on one shelf replaced a row of books. He had no anxiety about any of the papers there, for since the first burglary he had transferred every important document in his house to a safer place.

He opened the safe and looked at the notebook he had lost in Paris.

Thoughtfully he flicked through the pages.

Every entry had been decoded, and the interpretation written neatly in between the lines.

Essenden studied the book for some minutes; and then he dropped it into his pocket and began to pace the room with short bustling strides.