been burgled.'
She looked down at him in his chair.
'What's that?'
'Burgled. Feloniously entered, and important secret papers unlawfully abstracted from. Jill Trelawney, dossier of, subsection M 3879 xxi (
'When was this?'
'Night before last.'
'When you were here?'
'Exactly. My alibi is perfect.'
'You left at midnight?'
'Not of my own free will.'
She smiled.
'But you said you had an appointment?'
'I did.'
'Did you have an appointment?'
'Did I say I had? Jill, I won't be cross-examined. You must keep that for your American boy friend, when you've hooked him. I had to see a man in Camden Town about a second-hand Pomeranian, and he sold me a pup. How's that?'
Jill smiled again. Then she pointed to a litter of newspapers on a side table.
'This is the first I've heard about that Records Office affair,' she said, 'and I'll swear the rest of the world is as much in the dark as I am.'
'It is—mostly.'
'Then how do you know anything about it?'
'I have secret sources of information,' said the Saint.
He yawned monstrously. His head settled lazily back against a cushion, and his eyes closed.
Jill looked at him for a few seconds. Then—
'Simon!'
'Hullo,' sighed the Saint, starting up.
'What's the matter with you?' she demanded.
'Sorry,' said the Saint. 'I've had hardly any sleep for the last couple of nights, and I'm dead tired.'
'What have you been doing?'
Simon stretched himself.
'Jill,' he said, 'you ought to have more faith in me. I haven't been on the tiles. I've been darn near them, though—there was a nasty bit of drain-pipe work on the way, and one hideous moment when I thought the gutter was going to come to pieces in me 'and. But it turned out all right, though I did some damage to the ivy—'
'You didn't break into Scotland Yard?'
