"I'll give you this girl's address"-Lemuel took a slip of paper, and wrote. "She's expecting you to pick her up at nine o'clock to-morrow morning. You must go straight to Hanworth. . . ."
Simon folded the paper and stowed it carefully away in his pocketbook, while Lemuel gave further instructions.
Lemuel was showing signs of the strain. There was a puffiness about his eyes, and his plump cheeks seemed to sag flabbily. But he played his part with a grim restraint.
Leaving Jermyn Street, the Saint found himself heading mechanically for the Piccadilly Hotel. There he composed, after some careful calculations with the aid of a calendar, a brief note: Unless the sum of Ł20,000 (Twenty Thousand Pounds) is paid into the account of J. B. L. Smith at the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, by 12 noon on Saturday, I shall forward to the Public Prosecutor sufficient evidence to assure you of five years' penal servitude.
The note was signed with one of the Saint's most artistic self-portraits, and it was addressed to Francis Lemuel.
This was on Thursday night.
As he strolled leisurely home the Saint communed with himself again.
"Uncle Francis wanted a disreputable aviator so that if anything went wrong the aviator could be made the scapegoat. But when he deduced that I was the Saint, that idea went west. What should I have done if I'd been Uncle Francis? ... I should have arranged for Mr. Templar to fall out of an aëroplane at a height of about four thousand feet. A nasty accident-he stalled at the top of a loop, and his safety belt wasn't fastened. . . . And Uncle knows enough about the game to be able to bring the kite down. . . . And that's what I thought it was going to be, with a few drops of slumber mixture in my beer before we went up next time. . . . But this is nearly as good. I do my last job of work for Uncle, and doubtless there is an entertainment arranged for my especial benefit in Berlin to-morrow night-or a man hired to file my elevator wires ready for the return journey on Saturday. Yes- perhaps this is even cleverer than my own idea. The commission to take this girl to Berlin is intended to disarm my suspicions. I am meant to think that I'm not suspected. I'm sup posed to think that I'm absolutely on velvet, and therefore get careless. . . . Oh, it should be a great little week-end!"
The only trouble he expected the next morning would not be directly of Lemuel's making-and in that, again, his deduction was faultless.
Stella Dornford was surprised to see him.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want you to fly with me," said the Saint dramatically, and she was taken aback.
"Are you Lemuel's man?"
Simon nodded.
"Extraordinary how I get about, isn't it?" he murmured.
"Is this a joke?"
He shook his head.
"Anything but, as far as I'm concerned, old dear. Now, can you imagine anyone getting up at this hour of the morning to be funny?" He grinned at her puzzled doubts. "Call it coincidence, sweetheart, and lead me to your luggage."
At the foot of the stairs he paused and looked thoughtfully round the courtyard.
"They seem to have scraped Cuthbert off the concrete," he said; and then, abruptly: "How did you get this job?"
"Lemuel was in front the other night," she answered. "He sent his card round in the interval--"
"Told you he was struck with your dancing, bought you out, signed you up--"
"How did you know?"
"I didn't. But it fits in so beautifully. And to make me the accessory-oh, it's just too splendiferous for words! I didn't know Francis had such a sense of humour."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm right, am I? Listen. He said: 'It's one of the worst shows I've ever seen, but your dancing, Old Man'-no, I suppose he'd vary that-'but your dancing, Old Woman, is the elephant's uvula.' Or words to that effect. What?"
"He certainly said he liked my dancing--"
"Joke," said the Saint sardonically.
She caught him up when he was loading her two suitcases into the back of his car.
"Mr. Templar--"
"My name."
"I don't understand your sense of humour."
"Sorry about that."
"I'd be obliged if you'd leave my dancing alone."
"Darling," said the Saint kindly, "I'd like to maroon it on a desert island. After I'd met you for the first time I made a point of seeing your show; and I must say that I decided that you are beautiful and energetic and well-meaning, and your figure is a dream-but if your dancing is the elephant's uvula, then I think the R. S. P. C. A. ought to do something about it."
Pale with fury, she entered the car, and there was silence until they were speeding down the Great West Road.
Then Simon added, as if there had been no break in his speech: "If I were you, old dear, I'd be inclined to think very kindly of that nice boy in the bank."
"I don't think I want your advice, Mr. Templar," she said coldly. "Your job is to take me to Berlin-and I only wish I could get there in time without your help."
All the instinctive antagonism that had come up between them like barbed wire at their first meeting was back again. After the accident to the amateur mountaineer there had been a truce; but the Saint had foreseen renewed hostilities from the moment he had read the name and address on the paper which Lemuel had given him, and he had been at no pains to avert the outbreak. Patricia Holm used to say that the Saint had less than no idea of the art of handling women. That is a statement which other historians may be left to judge; the Saint himself would have been the smiling first to subscribe to the charge, but there were times when Simon Templar's vanity went to strange extremes. If he thought he had any particular accomplishment, he would either boast about it or disclaim it altogether, so you always knew where you were with him. So far as the handling of women was concerned, his methods were usually of the this-is-your-label-and-if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-get-the-hell-out-of-here school-when they were not exactly the reverse-and in this case, at least, he knew precisely what he was doing. Otherwise, he might have had a more entertaining journey to Berlin than he did; but he had developed a soft spot in his heart for the unknown nice boy who used to take Stella Dornford to the movies-and, bless him, probably used to hold her hand in the same. Now, Jacob Einsmann would never have thought of doing a thing like that. . . .
There was another reason-a subsidiary reason-for the Saint's aloofness. He wanted to be free to figure out the exact difference that had been made in the situation by the discovery of the identity of his charge. A new factor had been introduced which was likely to alter a lot of things. And it was necessary to find out a little more about it-a very little more.
So they travelled between Hanworth and the Tempelhof in a frostbitten silence which the Saint made no attempt to alleviate; and in the same spirit he took Stella Dornford by taxi to the address that Lemuel had given him.
This was a huge, gloomy house nearly two miles away from the centre of fashionable gaiety, and anything less like a night club Simon Templar had rarely seen.
He did not immediately open the door of the taxi. Instead, he surveyed the house interestedly through a window of the cab; and then he turned to the girl.
"I'm sure Jacob Einsmann isn't a very nice man," he said. "In fact, he and I are definitely going to have words. But I'm ready to leave you at a hotel before I go in."
She tossed her head and opened the door herself.
The Saint followed her up the steps of the house. She had rang the bell while he was paying off the taxi, and the door was unbarred as he reached her side.
"Herr Einsmann wishes to see you also, sir."
The Saint nodded and passed in. The butler-he, like the porter at the Calumet Club, of hallowed memory, looked as if he had been other things in his time-led them down a bare, sombre hall, and opened a door.