She was lighting a cigarette from the case he handed her, and she shook her head ruefully over the match.
"I didn't get through any of it," she said. "It was just a waste of time finding it. The door behind me and the false top in the desk must have opened just about simultaneously. There was a despatch box, and I think there were one or two odd papers underneath; that's all I saw before the fun started. It was hearing you outside that beat me. If that hadn't made me decide that the tall timber was the best next stop for Little Girl, I'd probably have lifted anything I could see and hoped I'd get something good."
"It wouldn't have helped you much," said the Saint. "There can't be many documents in existence that would incriminate Cullis, and it would have been a thousand to one against your collecting the right ones in your — handful."
"And now," said the girl bitterly, "if there ever were any incriminating papers in that cache, he'll have them out and burn them before he goes to bed tonight. He won't take a second chance with me."
Simon shrugged.
"Why should he ever have taken a chance at all?"
"It's the way of a man like that," said Jill. "He may have wanted to gloat over them in private. Or he may have just kept them for "curiosities."
Simon was steering the two-seater round the big oneway triangle at Hyde Park Corners, and he did not answer at once.
Then he said: "I wonder what incriminating papers there might, have been."
"So do I… But tonight's work may put the wind up him a bit more, which is something."