The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

'You didn't have to,' said the Saint. 'If you'd looked twice, you'd have seen that you only had to push your tie pin into that hole beside the lock, and the door would have opened as wide as a whale's yawn. Or are you going to tell me you hadn't heard, that one before?'

Teal began to unwrap a piece of chewing gum.

'I hear you've had some trouble.'

'Nice of you to come round and see if I was all right,' said the Saint pleasantly. 'As it happens, I'm still in the best of health. Now do you mind if I go back to bed?'

'You're not the only man who had trouble last night,' said Teal sleepily.

'Been eating too much again?' said the Saint solici­tously.

'Some men,' said Teal, 'bite off more than they can chew.'

The Saint sank into a chair with a sigh.

'Have you been sitting up reading a detective story, and then come round to work off some of the jokes on me?' he demanded.

'Up late last night, weren't you?'

'No,' said the Saint. 'Up early this morning.'

'Enjoy yourself in Hampstead?'

Simon wrinkled his brow.

'I believe I've heard of that place before,' he said. 'Doesn't one of the buses go there, or something?'

Teal chewed stolidly.

'I know roughly what time you got back here,' he said, 'because I was able to find that out at Rochester Row. I also know what time somebody not quite unknown was busting Mr. Cullis's desk. There were fresh footprints in one flower bed and the same footprints over that patch of building land at the back. It's rather a distinctive kind of mud on that bit of building land. Funny I should have seen the same kind of mud on the floor boards of your car. I went to the garage this morning before I called in here, just to have a look.'

The Saint smiled.

'Did Cullis see the man who bust his desk?'

'He did.' . 'Is he certain he could identify him?'

'Fairly certain.'

'Then,' said the Saint, 'you might fetch him along and ask him to identify me.'

Teal shook his head.

'Oh, no,' he said. 'Yours weren't the only footprints. And the other set of footprints are the ones which Mr. Cullis can identify.'

Simon raised Saintly eyebrows.

'Then why bother me?'

'I just had an idea.'

'Headlines in the Daily Scream,' murmured the Saint irreverently, ' 'Scotland Yard a Hive of First-class Brains!' But you must take care you don't get too many of these ideas, Claud. I don't know how far your skull will stretch, but I shouldn't think it would hold more than two at a time. . . . Now is that all you've got to say, or do you want to charge me with anything?'

'Not yet,' said Teal. 'I just wanted to see whether I was right or not.'

'And now you either