“You didn’t need to play-act as hard as that!”
The seal, mindful of the juggernaut that had smitten him and his comrade in the rain-swept alley, was not about to calm down. He kept shouting, machine-gunning blasts of accusation round the room, urging the others to do something. As on the previous night, he did not place himself physically in the forefront of the battle, but the situation was still going his way.
Simon took a step back towards the door.
“Maybe I’d better drop round later, when you’ve all calmed down,” he said diplomatically.
“Don’t let him get out!” the seal howled.
The man behind the desk confirmed the order, and four thugs reached the Saint at the same instant. Simon’s hands, elbows, knees, and feet became deadly weapons. One of his attackers dropped to the floor, squirming in agony. A second staggered back, half blinded by a blow to his face that sent a cascade of blood streaming down over his lips and chin. But a fist caught Simon hard on his own jaw, slamming him back against the wall. Two apes were on him like one four-armed monster, and a knee in his stomach knocked the wind momentarily out of him. The seal was hopping up and down, trying to see the centre of the melee. Simon braced himself against the wall and managed to ram the toe of his right shoe into the solar plexus of one of his attackers, sending the man backwards into the seal. The two of them bounced across the carpet like bowling pins.
It was a satisfying sight, but the last that Simon saw for several hours. He was bashed on the head with something very hard. The room seemed to fill with black water, which rose very rapidly from floor to ceiling. The shouts and grunts and heavy breaths faded to silence.
There was no more of anything until after a timeless time he became strangely and vaguely aware of his own existence. He seemed to be floating in nowhere, unable to see or hear. His mind was not functioning at a level that would allow him even to wonder who or where he was. His being was a small unstable ball of pain. He felt his arm being manipulated, and a momentary new pinpoint of pain, and then nothingness again.
Carole Angelworth waited for his promised call until eleven-thirty. Her phone rang twice during the evening, but neither of those calls was the one she wanted.
She couldn’t really believe that he would stand her up deliberately. It wouldn’t be like him to lie. He would just have told her when he had left her at the end of the afternoon that he couldn’t possibly make it that night.
She was full of self-doubts. Had she thrown herself at him so obviously that he wanted to hurt her in order to get rid of her? Had she bored him to death with that tour of her father’s charities?
She wasn’t used to being refused anything that she wanted — a dress, a trinket, a car, or a man. She knew she was spoiled, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow a rejection. She had decided that she was madly in love. And now the man she was in love with was half an hour late phoning her. And the worst of it was that she felt a strange foreboding, an apprehension that could not be explained by the logical part of her mind.
She picked up the hotel phone and asked for his room. It didn’t answer.
She felt a need to talk to her father again, as she had always done when faced with anything beyond her ordinary capacity to handle. She went down the hall and through the living-room and found him in his study.
Richard Hamlin was there too, inevitably, carrying on an earnest conversation at her father’s big desk. He stopped speaking immediately and stood up, greeting her with the toothy, slightly deferential grin that he apparently thought would someday win her trust, if not her affection. He preferred hanging about in the background, almost shyly, where he could pretend not to notice what was going on, and where he could at least hope that no one was noticing him. But whenever confronted directly he came up with that same grin, which Carole had once said reminded her of a slightly dishonest medieval sheepherder tugging his forelock at his feudal lord’s daughter.
“Well, ready for bed?” her father asked, leaning back in his chair.
“Not really,” Carole answered. She walked up to the desk and said quite rudely: “Richard, I wish you weren’t here every time I come in. But just this once, I’d like to speak to my father alone.”
Hamlin looked at Hyram Angelworth, who nodded. Carole waited until her father’s man Friday had left the study and then got straight to the point. She felt secure in this room, with its warm pine panelling, heavy leather upholstering, and massive, solid furniture.
“I’m very worried about Simon,” she began, “and don’t tell me you don’t know who Simon is.”
Her father had a habit of ignoring the existence of male friends of hers whom he did not approve of.
“It would be a little hard for me not to have heard the name,” he said indulgently. “You’ve mentioned it at least thirty times in the past twenty-four hours. Exactly what is it you’re worried about?”
“He had some business tonight, and I made him promise to call me by eleven, and he hasn’t done it.”
The springs of Hyram Angelworth’s desk chair squeaked lightly as he leaned further back and shrugged.
“Catastrophe,” he sympathised. “I can remember occasionally being kept busy after eleven at night myself. Why don’t you just stop fretting and get some sleep? I don’t doubt that you’ll track him down in the morning.”
Carole settled on the edge of the desk and looked seriously at him.
“This isn’t something to joke about,” she said. “I’m in love with him.”
Her father breathed deeply, sat forward, and drilled at his desk blotter with his pen.
“Carole, in the first place you haven’t known him long enough to know whether you’re in love with him or not.”
“Before you go on to the second place, please let me dispose of that. I am in love with him. You haven’t heard me say that since I came of age, have you? This one isn’t just for laughs. It’s taken me a long time to feel like this, maybe because you set an example that’s hard for most fellows to compete with.”
Angelworth flushed with pleasure, but shook his head.
“Well, you can still pardon me for being a little sceptical. You’ve known this man for almost a whole day—”
“And I’ve never met anybody like him before.”
Angelworth suddenly gave her a penetrating, almost brutal look.
“I’m sure you haven’t,” he said.
She bridled.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Simon Templar is not exactly unknown to me. By reputation. In fact he’s... I can’t use any other word... notorious.”
Carole stood up.
“Notorious!” she exclaimed unbelievingly. “What do you mean, notorious? And how do you know? Have you been checking up on him because he took me out?”
Angelworth raised a soothing hand.
“Dick checked on him, dear. It wasn’t very difficult. The name didn’t register when I first met him last night, but it came back to me later. I don’t want to upset you, but the man’s... well, an adventurer. I can almost guarantee that his ‘business’ tonight wouldn’t be approved by the Chamber of Commerce. And the longer he stays here, the more likely he is to get in serious trouble.”
Hyram Angelworth was not prepared for his daughter’s reaction. Her lips began to quiver, and her eyes brimmed with tears. And if there was one thing that everybody knew about Hyram Angelworth, it was that he could not bear to see his daughter unhappy. He was not one of those rich men who doles out handsome allowances to his offspring as a substitute for love. His actions and attitudes had made it clear ever since his wife had died that his lavish generosity to his daughter was an expression of a love that focussed exclusively on her. He had no other children. Now he had no wife, and any women in his life were hired conveniences rather than objects of affection.