The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

morning and told to go over and attend to Waldstein himself, as there was some difficulty with the French police, and Waldstein was likely to get away during the argument. We asked him why he hadn't gone to the Quai d'Orsay first, to present his papers, and he said the chief had told him to get Waldstein first and argue afterwards.'

'Well?'

Cullis shrugged.

'After that, it was all over.'

'Don't see it,' said the Saint. 'If Trelawney was guilty, why should he tell that story to the very man who would know at once that it wasn't true?'

'Brains,' said the assistant commissioner. 'He'd thought out the possibility of being caught, and he'd got his defense ready—a frame-up. That story was the best he could have told. It prepared his ground for when we opened his safe deposit and found, among others, bank­notes that were traced to Waldstein.'

'How did he account for those?'

'He couldn't.'

'And afterwards?'

'The chief decided not to make a public scandal of it. For one thing, it would have been difficult to get a convic­tion, even on that evidence, because we couldn't bring Waldstein into it. Waldstein, in the eyes of the ignorant world, was a perfectly respectable citizen and is the same to this day. So there wasn't any lawful reason why he shouldn't have given Trelawney money. Still, Trelawney was asked for his resignation, and he died a month after­wards. I don't like thinking about that part of it—it isn't pleasant to think that I was indirectly responsible, even if he was a grafter.'

Simon reached for an ashtray.

'And yet,' he said, 'it seems rather a fluke. Why should Waldstein have been the right bait? And why should Trelawney have walked into the trap so easily?'

Cullis shrugged again.

'Waldstein was the sort of man who might have been the right bait. We took a chance. If it had failed, we'd have had to think of something else. But if Waldstein was the right bait, Trelawney was bound to walk into the trap. If a man takes graft, he can't let his clients down; if he does, they can squeal on him. Waldstein being in Paris put Trelawney in a tight corner, but he had to take his chance. He didn't know how big a chance it was. Ordinarily, you see, he might easily have got away with it. But he didn't know that there was already some sort of evidence against him; he didn't know he was being followed; and he couldn't have guessed that there could be enough suspicion to lead to the opening of his safe deposit.'

'Had he any particular enemies?'

'No more than the average successful policeman.'

'No name you can remember hearing him mention?'

Cullis tugged at an iron-grey moustache.

'Heavens! I don't know!'

'No one of the name of—Essenden?'

It was a shot in the dark, but it creased two additional wrinkles into the assistant commissioner's lined forehead.

'What made you think of that?' he asked.

'I didn't,' said the Saint. 'It just fell out of the blue. But Jill was on her way to Essenden's when I first met her, and that was the first time the Angels have been seen out