The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

before an arrest. Get me?'

'But they were there to cover Dyson. Surely it's reason­able for them to have realized that it's easier to prevent a man being arrested than to get him away after the arrest?'

Simon nodded.

'I know. Still, I'm keeping an open mind.'

He continued in communion with his open mind for some time after the commissioner had left—and went to bed with the mind, if possible, more open than before.

Perhaps Sir Francis Trelawney had been framed. Per­haps he had not been framed. If he had been framed, it had been brilliantly done. If he had not been framed . . . Well, it was quite natural that a girl like Jill Trelawney, as he estimated her, might refuse to believe it. And, either way, if you looked at it from the standpoint of a law-abiding citizen and an incipient policeman to boot, the rights and wrongs of the Trelawney case made no difference to the rights and wrongs of Jill.

Within the past five months, a complete dozen of valuable prisoners had been rescued from under the very arms of the law, long as those arms were traditionally reputed to be; and the manner of their rescue, in every case, betrayed such an exhaustive knowledge of police methods and routine that at times a complete reorganiza­tion of the Criminal Investigation Department's system seemed to be the only possible alternative to impotent surrender. And this, as is the way of such things, accurate­ly coincided with one of those waves of police unpopularity and hysterical newspaper criticism which make com­missioners and superintendents acidulated and old before their time. Clearly, it could not go on. The newspapers said so, and therefore it must have been so. And the Saint understood quite calmly and contentedly that, after the matter in which the Saint had made his debut as a law-abiding citizen, either the Angels of Doom or Simon Templar had got to come to a sudden and sticky end.

Completely comprehending this salient fact, the Saint drank his breakfast coffee black the next morning, and sent the milk bottle from outside his front door to an analyst. He had the report by lunchtime.

'At least,' he told Cullis, 'I'm collecting the makings of a case against the Angels.'

'There was nothing against them before,' assented the commissioner sarcastically.

Simon shook his head.        

'There wasn't. Assaulting the police, obstructing the police—I tell you, in spite of everything, you could only have got them on minor charges. But attempted mur­der——'

'Or even real murder,' said Cullis cheerfully.

 

2

 

'Slinky' Dyson had squealed. Simon Templar had to admit that nothing but that happy windfall had enabled him to step so promptly upon the tail of the Angels of Doom. Slinky was pulled sin for suspicious loitering one evening, and when they searched him they found on his person a compact leather wallet containing tools which were held to be house-breaking implements within the meaning of the Act. Simon happened to be in Marlbor­ough Street police station at the time, and witnessed the discovery.

'I was waiting for a friend,' said Slinky. 'Honest I was.'

'Honest you may have was,' said the inspector heavily. 'But you grew out of that years ago.'

Shortly after Slinky had been locked up, he asked to speak to the inspector again, and the inspector thought the squeal sufficiently promising to fetch Teal in to hear it. And then Teal sent in the Saint.

'I told you I was