She shook her head.
"No. He was terribly obstinate and silly. I wanted him to have a good time and forget all his stupid ideas, but he just wouldn't. Instead of enjoying himself like an ordinary person he'd just sit and talk to me for hours, and sometimes he'd bring along a fellow called Windlay that he lived with, and then they'd both talk to me."
"What did they talk about?"
She spread out her hands in a vague gesture.
"Politics — you know, stupid things. And he used to talk about a thing called the Ring, and Mr Luker, and General Sangore, and even his own father, and say the beastliest things about them. And there were newspapers, and factories, and some people called the Sons of France—"
The Saint was suddenly very rigid.
"What was that again?"
"The Sons of France — or something like that. I don't know what it was all about and I don't care. I know he used to say that he was going to upset everything in a few weeks and make things uncomfortable for everybody, and I used to tell him not to be so damned selfish, because after all what's the point in upsetting everybody? Live and let live is my motto, and I wouldn't interfere with other people's private affairs if they'll leave mine alone."
The Saint put another cigarette between his lips and steadied his hands round his lighter.
"Have you any idea what he was going to do that was going to upset everybody so much?" he asked.
The girl shrugged her slim shoulders.
"I don't know. He had a lot of papers that he was going to publish and prove something. And just a week or two ago he was frightfully excited about some photographs that he'd got hold of. I don't know what they were, but both he and Windlay were frightfully worked up about it. But what does it matter, anyway?"
3
Simon Templar filled his lungs with smoke and let it out again in a trailing streamer that flowed with the unbroken evenness of a deep river. The shock that had brought him to conscious immobility had passed, letting the tenseness ebb out of his muscles to leave his natural lazy imperturbability apparently unchanged. But under his effortless and unruffled poise his brain was thrumming like an intoxicated dynamo.
He had fished for clues and he had brought them up in a pail. It didn't matter for the moment how they fitted together. Luker and the Arms Ring; Sangore, formerly of the War Office, how a director of the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company; Fairweather, sometime secretary of state for war, now on the board of Norfelt Chemicals; Kennet the pacifist, the groping crusader. Papers, exposes, photographs. And the Sons of France. Whichever way you spilled them, they fell into some sort of pattern. The drums he had heard such a short while ago thundered in the Saint's temples; the blaring brass shrieked in his ears. He felt as if he were standing on the brink of a breathless precipice, watching the boiling of a hideously parturient abyss. The keen clear zenithal winds of destiny fanned through his hair.
He was conscious, in a curiously distant way, that the girl was still talking.
"I never used to listen very hard — I was too busy trying to think of ways to stop them. If I hadn't stopped them, they'd have gone on all night. So when I'd had enough of politics I'd say something like 'Let's go to the Berkeley and have a drink,' and then they'd both start talking about the snobbishness of big hotels and how bad drink was for me; and I didn't mind that nearly so much, because I quite like talking about hotels and drink."
The Saint brought himself back to her with a deliberate effort. He could think afterwards; now, precious time was flying, and the inquest was already late. He could have no more than a few seconds to take advantage of what Providence had thrown into his lap.
He said: "But if Kennet hated Luker and Sangore so much, what made him come down here for the week end?"
"I did. I thought that if he could come down here and see what they were really like, he might have given up his stupid ideas. And I knew they were going to offer him an awfully good job. Algy told me so."
"Who?"
"Algy. Algy Fairweather. Of course you know."
"Of course," said the Saint humbly. "And didn't Kennet appreciate it?"
"No. That's what made me so furious. When we got here he told me he was glad they wanted to see him, because he wanted to see them, too, and instead of them giving him a job he was going to see that theirs were made so uncomfortable that they'd be glad to give them up. So I told him I thought he was a silly, stupid, narrow-minded, bigoted halfwit, and a crashing bore as well, and — and we parted. After dinner he went into the library to talk to them, and I went to the movies with Don Knightley, and I never saw John again." She gazed at the Saint appealingly. "D-do you really think it was my fault that all this happened?"
He considered her without smiling.
"I think you deserve a damned good hiding for leading Kennet up the garden," he said dispassionately. "And if I were Windlay I'd see that you got one."
She pouted. She seemed to be more disappointed that he could think of her like that than seriously annoyed by what he had said. And then, quite unanswerably, a gleeful little twinkle came into her eyes that made her look momentarily like a mischievous and very attractive child.
"You wouldn't say that if you knew Windlay," she giggled. "He's a very pale and skinny young man with glasses."
Simon gave up the struggle. Actually he felt a colder anger against the men who had used the girl as their tool. The possibility that she might have been something more than an unsuspecting instrument was one which he discarded almost at once. She had already told him far too much. And her mind, whatever its obvious failings, could never have worked that way.
"Where did Kennet and Windlay live?" he asked flatly.
"Oh, miles from anywhere, out in Notting Hill, in an awful place called Balaclava Mansions."
"Notting Hill isn't miles from anywhere," said the Saint. "The trouble with you is that you've never heard of any place outside the West End. You've got a brain; why don't you get reckless and try using it?"
She sighed.
"My God," she said. "Now you're going to come over all earnest on me. You think I ought to have a good hiding for the way I treated Johnny. I suppose my intentions weren't serious enough. I oughtn't to have pretended something I didn't mean. Is that it?"
"More or less," he said bluntly.
He wondered what excuse she was going to make for herself.
She didn't make any excuse. She laughed.
"You have the nerve to stand there, in your beautiful clothes, with your dark hair and dashing blue eyes, and tell me that," she said startlingly. "I bet you've made love to heaps of women yourself, hundreds of times, and never meant a word of it."
The Saint stared at her. For a moment he was completely and irrevocably taken aback.
In that moment his first hasty estimate of her underwent a surprising reversal, although it made no difference to his belief in her innocence. But it gave him an insight into her mind which he had not been expecting. She might be featherbrained and spoiled, but she had something more in her head than he had credited her with. For the first time he found himself appreciating her.
"You win, darling," he said. The turn of his lips became impish. "Only I always mean it a little."
Then one of the side doors opened and he saw Lady Sangore surge out like a full-rigged ship putting out from harbour. Behind her, in a straggling flotilla, came Sir Robert, Kane Luker and Mr Fairweather. Fairweather, peering round, caught sight of a ruddy-faced walrus-moustached man who. looked like a builder's foreman dressed up in his Sunday suit, who got up from the bench where he had been sitting as the party emerged. They shook hands, and Fairweather spoke to him for a moment before he shepherded him into the office which they had just left and came puttering back to rejoin the wake of the fleet. Simon noted the incident as he watched the armada catch sight of Lady Valerie and set a course for her.