“I never said I was dying to meet you,” the girl denied. “All I said was that if Theresa didn’t introduce us I was going to hang myself from that chandelier during the last waltz.”
Miss Marpeldon giggled loudly, like any good audience for society-ballroom wit.
“This is Carole Angelworth,” she said. “Carole, this is Simon Templar. I’m sure you two can find plenty to talk about.”
Miss Marpeldon was a born matchmaker, and was immediately off to the rescue of a gangly young man whose very costly tuxedo seemed to be doing him no good at all in his search for a dancing partner.
“I’m flattered that you were considering suicide over me before we’d even met,” Simon said to Carole Angelworth. “It’s understandable, but still flattering.”
“Oh, think nothing of it,” she replied airily. “I’ve told her the same thing about at least two other men this evening.”
“What happened to them?”
“Appearances can be deceiving. They just didn’t live up to their looks.” She paused and shrugged. “So I poisoned them.”
“Naturally,” the Saint nodded. “I have a feeling I’ll be safer if your hands are occupied. Let’s dance.”
“Well, normally I dance with my feet, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Much more of that corn and I might poison you,” Simon warned her.
She slipped easily into his arms, and they merged with the other dancers in a slow old-fashioned fox trot, or rather a sort of intimate shuffle, which was about as much movement as the crowded floor allowed. Something in the way her hand held his belied the cool banter of her gilt-edged accent. Before he had ever seen her, she had been watching him. Among the other younger males in the ballroom — who were generally over-fed, over-protected, and under-exercised — Simon Templar’s lean tall strength and almost sinister handsomeness had attracted her immediately. Now, as she danced close to him, his magnetism captured her even more, and she found it hard to breathe.
“I don’t know that much about you,” she said with an effort at her original nonchalance. “Do you really and truly think we ought to run away together?”
“Give me another half minute to think it over,” Simon said.
She leaned back a little and looked up at him.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you at one of these brawls before.”
“I move round a lot,” he told her.
“Where?”
“Wherever my business takes me.”
“What’s your business?”
“It varies,” he said. “Mostly armed robbery, jewel thieving, large-scale swindles.”
“I knew you were the kind of man who wouldn’t tell anything about himself. You like being mysterious.”
“At least I’ve said something,” Simon replied. “What about you?”
“My name is Carole Angelworth,” she recited with her eyes closed. “I am twenty-three years old. I have a degree in sociology. My mother is dead. I live with my father, Hyram J. Angelworth, who is very rich and generous, and spoils me rotten. I am reasonably normal except for a mad urge to climb trees just before the full moon. I have a passion for back-rubs and strawberries.”
“At least back-rubs are never out of season,” Simon mused. “But then, I suppose neither are strawberries, when your father is Hyram J. Angelworth.”
“You’ve heard of him?” Carole asked.
The music ended just then, and they strolled towards one of the bars.
“You can’t be in Philadelphia long without hearing about him. The Angelworth Foundation. The Angelworth Children’s Clinic. The Citizens Committee for Law Enforcement. He’s done the town a lot of good.”
“He’s a good man,” Carole said earnestly. “Sometimes I’m afraid people take advantage of him. He worked hard for what he’s got, and now he gives it away right and left. You don’t even know a fraction of the things he does — the charities. But I hate that word. It sounds so condescending.”
“Well, there are worse ways for a man to get his kicks,” said the Saint. “And from the looks of that solid-silver dress of yours, he’s at least keeping enough cash round to pay the light bills.”
“It’s rude to comment on the price of things,” Carole remarked.
“Whoever said I wasn’t rude?” Simon retorted.
Once they had met, there was no question of their parting. Simon could see that behind her bantering façade, she really had developed an instant crush on him; and he would have been less than human if he had not responded to her dew-fresh beauty and youthful exuberance. They spent the evening happily together. Carole turned down several requests to dance with other men. It was only “when the ball had rolled beyond its midnight peak that she and Simon were surrounded by half a dozen of her friends insisting that they all go off together to a livelier spot. Simon left it up to Carole, who had no particular fondness for the overpowering elegance of the ballroom.
“Go ahead, and we’ll meet you there,” she told the other couples. “I want to tell Daddy good night and introduce him to Simon.”
He was mildly surprised when, at the elevators, she pressed an up button.
“We live here,” she explained. “In the penthouse apartment. Daddy glommed on to it when the hotel was being built.”
“I’ve always wanted to see how the under-privileged people make out,” he murmured.
“Where are you staying?”
“Here, too, as a matter of fact. But not in quite such grandeur. I took a room here because the ball was here and it seemed to save a lot of running about, and because they have a garage in the basement.”
“So you don’t mind a few modern comforts either.”
She found her father in a book-lined library off the formal drawing room, sitting in leather-upholstered comfort with three guests of about his own age and a considerably younger fourth — a tall hunched man with long arms and a watchful pair of ball-bearing eyes deeply imbedded under dark bushy brows — standing behind him. Bodyguard? Simon immediately asked himself, for the standing man’s face would have seemed more at home on a post-office wall than here in the company of the thoroughbred rich.
“Daddy, this is Mr Templar. He’s been taking beautiful care of your only daughter all evening, so I thought you’d like to express your gratitude.” She turned to Simon. “Daddy’s always petrified I’m going to fall in with evil companions, or be kidnapped or something.”
Angelworth put down his liqueur and rose from his green wing-backed chair to shake hands. He combined an air of command with a natural modesty which made him both impressive and likeable at first sight. He was in his late fifties, almost as tall as the Saint, with a carefully tended mane of white hair which contributed to making his head seem larger than the heads of the people around him. His mouth was broad and strong, but softened into an almost benign smile.
“If you’ve been making my daughter’s life happier I’m particularly pleased to meet you,” he said.
“And I’m particularly pleased to meet the father of the young lady who’s given me such a delightful evening,” Simon replied with equal graciousness.
The names of the others, punctiliously introduced, would have needed no references from Dun & Bradstreet, with the exception of the craggy-browed fourth, whose name was Richard Hamlin and whose handshake and grunt were as short on urbanity as his appearance.
“My secretary and aide-de-camp,” Angelworth explained.
Carole surveyed the other three suspiciously.
“You string-pullers aren’t still trying to talk my father into running for governor, are you?”
Hyram Angelworth sat down with a weary smile.