The commissioner helped himself. He was a grizzled, hard-featured man who had worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder, and he had all the taciturn abruptness common to men who have risen in the world by nothing but a relentless devotion to the ambition of rising in the world.
"How did she strike you?"
"She didn't," said the Saint perversely."I think she would have, though, but for the low cunning with which I made my escape. She's a sweet child."
"Charming," agreed the commissioner ironically. "So gentle! Such endearing ways!"
"Ever meet her?"
"No. I knew her father, of course."
Simon grinned.
"He never made any friendly advance towards me," he murmured. "But of course there was some prejudice against me at the time. Tell me that story again — from the inside."
Cullis settled himself.
"The inside is that Trelawney swore all along that he'd been framed," he said. "It's not such an inside, anyway, because he told exactly the same tale at the inquiry. After all, that was the only defense open to him: he was caught so red-handed that no one could have thought out any other explanation except that he was guilty."