The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

He pushed through into the sitting room. His round red face was redder than ever; and for once his jaws seemed to be unoccupied with the product of the Wrigley Corporation.

The constable followed; and Simon humbly followed the constable.

"Now look at that!" said Teal sourly.

The Saint stood deferentially aside; and the constable stood in his tracks and gaped along the line indicated by Mr. Teal's forefinger. The Saint had not interfered with the improvised dummy in the chair. He had felt that it would have been unkind to deprive the constable of the food for thought with which that mysteriously motionless silhouette must have been able to divert his vigil. "And while you were making a fool of yourself up here," said Teal bitterly, "Jill Trelawney was walking out of the front door and getting clean away. And you call yourself a policeman!"

Simon coughed gently.

"I think," he said diffidently, "that the constable meant well."

Teal turned on him. The detective's heavy-lidded eyes glittered on the dangerous verge of fury.

The Saint smiled.

Slowly, deliberately, Teal's mouth closed upon the word it had been about to release. Slowly Teal's heavy eyelids dropped down.

"Saint," said Teal, "I told you you were a bright boy."

"So did Auntie Ethel," said the Saint.

 

2

 

Simon Templar, refreshed by a good night's sleep, set out for the Ritz at 9.30 next morning.

He had not been kept up late the night before. Teal, gathering himself back into the old pose of mountainous sleepiness out of which he had so nearly allowed himself to be disturbed, had gone very quietly. In fact, Simon had been sound asleep three quarters of an hour after the detective's return visit.

Teal hadn't a leg to stand on. True, the Saint had be­haved very curiously; but there is no law against men behaving curiously. The Saint had lied; but lying is not in itself a criminal offense. It is not even a misdemeanour for a man to arrange a dummy in a chair in such a way that a realistic silhouette is thrown upon a blind. And there is no statute to prevent a man claiming a Lithuanian princess for an aunt, provided he does not do it with intent to defraud. ... So Teal had gone home.

Suspicion is not evidence—that is a fundamental prin­ciple of English law. The law deals in fact; and a thousand suspicious circumstances do not make a fact.