"Simon Templar," said Teal, somewhat inconsequently, "is a very clever young man."
Cullis looked at him. He remembered that the feud between Chief Inspector Teal and the Saint was one of the epic legends of the force. There had been truces from time to time — truces and breezy interludes — but the fundamental feud had never finished. And if anything had been wanting to reawaken in Teal's expansive breast the ambition to be the first man to lag Simon Templar, it should have been supplied to him on the night in London, such a very short time ago, when the Saint had balked him of a coveted prey by a trick which a babe in arms should have spotted and which a middle-aged police constable had somehow failed to spot.
"A very clever young man," said Teal.
"Have you any idea where he is now?"
"He's in London, living in his own home. I saw him last night."
"You saw him?" exclaimed Cullis incredulously. — "But—"
"Need we have any more of that?" asked Teal wearily. "I'm tired of being told I ought to arrest him. I'm tired of explaining that we can't do anything against him in England for robbing Essenden in Paris. And I'm tired of explaining that you can suspect what you like about him and Jill having been at Essenden's the night Essenden disappeared. But you can't prove anything, and Simon Templar knows it. He can admit anything he likes in private conversations with me, but that evidence disappears the moment I walk out into the street again. He's made a fool of me once, and I'm not going to give him the chance of making a fool of me again by charging me with unlawful arrest. Don't you know that the Saint has never yet been inside?" he added.
"With his record?"
"He hasn't got a record," said Teal. "He's a suspicious character, and an absconding policeman, but that's the worst you can say about him without paying damages for slander — except for that affair in Paris, which we can't do anything about. Once upon a time there were other things we could have held him for, but he got a pardon and wiped all those out. Heavens above, sir," Teal broke out in a kind of helpless exasperation, "haven't I spent years of my life trying to find something I could put on the Saint? I've had men he's beaten up, in the old days, and he's told me himself he did it, and I couldn't make one of them say a word against him — not a word we could have acted on, I mean. I've had the Saint on the run, once, with a bundle of evidence against him all tied up in my office and a real warrant in my pocket, and then he went and saved a royal train and had all his sins forgiven. I've stood and watched him blow a man to blazes, and I haven't been able to prove it to this day. I'm not a miracle man, and I'm not even a convincing liar. I'll tell the world the Saint has beaten me in every game I know and some I'd never heard of before I met him, and I'll try to smile while I'm saying it. But I won't even try to tell a deaf-and-dumb half-wit that I could pull the Saint in tomorrow and have him sent down for so much as seven days in the second division, because I know all I should get would be the horse laugh."
"But he's known to be an associate of Trelawney's."