The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady)

then Essenden. There must be a con­necting link somewhere.'

'Of course there is. Trelawney believes that her father was framed, and she's out to get the men who did it. Her idea is that there was a ring of first-class crooks work­ing in with an accomplice right inside this building. Sir Francis Trelawney was the man they wanted here, though —and they couldn't get him. What was more, he was get­ting hotter on their trail every day. So he had to go. He was framed, with the help of their police accomplice; and we know the rest. That's her story, and somehow or other she's made the Saint believe it.'

'But that's ridiculous! There were only two people concerned in the show that really put the finger on Sir Francis Trelawney. The chief commissioner was one, and I was the other. I told Templar the story myself. If you're suggesting that one of us was taking graft from Waldstein——'

'I'm suggesting nothing,' said Teal. 'I'm just telling you the tale we're up against.'

Cullis frowned.

'It's a tale that's making more trouble for us than we've had for years—there was another leading article in the Record this evening,' he said sourly. 'Something has got to be done about it, or the chief will be wanting resignations all round. If there's anything at all on Tre­lawney's side, there'll be a clue to it in the Record's Office somewhere—if we can only find it.'

Teal nodded.

'It would help us if we could,' he said. 'She'll be going after this accomplice in the Yard itself next, and if we knew whom she was going to pick on, we'd be ready for her. I wouldn't be worrying so much if the Saint wasn't in it, but when I see his trade-mark anywhere I know there's going to be no bluff about the trouble. I wouldn't put it above him to kidnap the chief commis­sioner single-handed and flood out Records with back numbers of the Vie Parisienne.'

'He'd have to be a clever man to do it,' said Cullis, who had no sense of humour.

'The Saint is a clever man.'

Cullis grunted.

'I'll go through that Trelawney dossier again myself,' he said.

That dossier was put before Mr. Assistant Commis­sioner Cullis the very next day; and he spent a whole twelve hours with it, neglecting all other business.

This record of Jill Trelawney was of great interest to Mr. Cullis, for it dealt with the career of that danger­ous lady for some time before she had burst upon Lon­don, as the leader of the Angels of Doom. It went back, in fact, to the event which had led to the creation of the Angels—the time when Sir Francis Trelawney, her father, himself at one time assistant commissioner, had been detected almost in the act of betraying his position and submitting to bribery and corruption. And after his death, which some said was directly due to his discov­ery and disgrace, had come the Angels of Doom, with his daughter at their head. ...

As he went through that dossier, Cullis remembered the day, nearly three years ago, when he himself, then only a superintendent, had helped to bring home the charge—the day in Paris when he had gone there with the chief commissioner to watch Sir Francis in the very act of betraying a police secret.

And Cullis remembered the day after that. An after­noon in Scotland Yard when, in the presence of Trelawney and the chief commissioner, he had opened a box taken from the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, and had found in it a bundle of new five-pound notes which it had been possible to trace back directly to Waldstein. He remembered Trelawney's protestations—that he had never put the notes in his strong box, that he had never seen them before, that he could not explain how they came to be there at all. And the chief commissioner's cold, accusing eyes. ...

All these memories came back to Cullis as he went through page after page of the dossier, and they were still with him when he went