Simon flitted up the stairs. There was no one to question him. He moved along the upper corridor in effortless silence until he came to a door on which was painted the figure 6. When he saw it it was like Parsifal coming to the end of his journey. He stood for several seconds outside, not moving, not even breathing, simply listening with ears keyed to hypernormal receptiveness. The only sounds they could catch were occasional almost inaudible rustlings beyond the door. He took a quick catlike step forward, grasped the handle and turned it smoothly, and went into the room.
Lady Valerie looked up at him from a couch on the far side of the room with her face blurring into a blank oval of dumbfounded amazement.
Simon locked the door and stood with his back to it.
"Darling," he said reproachfully, but with the lilt of rapture still playing havoc with the evenness of his voice, "what was the matter with our hospitality?"
2
The room was one of those quaint dormitoryes which have always made the English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was principally furnished with a gigantic imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation mahogany dressing table with a tilting mirror; a black-enamelled iron bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a marble-topped washstand bearing a china basin with a china jug standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horticultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reasonable care, just manage to find a path between them without having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in which Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had unsuccessfully tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that she had been perusing when the Saint came in.
Simon's satiric eye rested on the ends of documents that still protruded.
"If you'd told us you wanted something to read," he said, "we could have lent you some good books."
He leaned against the door, clothed in magnificent assurance, as if he had been conversationally breaking the ice with an old friend from whom he was sure to receive a cordial welcome.
He got it. The stunned astonishment dissolved out of her face and a broad schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.
"Well, I'm damned!" she said. "Aren't you marvellous? How on earth did you know I was here?"
He grinned in return. After all that he had been through to find her he couldn't help it.
"Haven't you heard about me?" he said. "I do these tricks for my living."
"Of course," she said. "I always knew you were supposed to be frightfully clever, but I didn't really believe you were as clever as all that… Oh well, we live and learn, and anyhow you haven't got it all your own way. I think I was pretty clever myself, the way I got away from your house. I worked it all out before I went to bed last night. Don't you think it was clever of me?"
"Very clever," he agreed. "But you see it was just the way I expected you to be clever."
She stared at him.
"The way you…"
"Yes."
"But you don't mean you—"
"Naturally," he lied calmly. "I knew that if you got away, the first thing you'd do would be to get hold of those papers, wherever you'd left them. I wanted to know where they were, and I didn't want to have to beat it out of you. So I just let you get away and fetch them for me."
"I don't believe you!"
"Would you like me to tell you all about it? I was behind you all the time. You picked up the ticket at the South Kensington post office, and then you went on and collected the package from the checkroom at Paddington. You took the first train down here, and you were driven up from the station by a bloke with no roof to his mouth and one of the oldest taxis on the road. Does that help?"
She looked as crestfallen as a child that has had a succulent lollipop snatched out of its mouth.
"I think you're beastly," she said.
"I know. Pigs move pointedly over to the other end of the sty when I come in. And now suppose you tell me what those papers were doing at Paddington."
"That's easy. You see I had them with me when I was coming down here for last week end, because of course I hadn't read them, and I was going to read them on the train and give them back to Johnny when I saw him. Then I thought if they had all these things in them that were so rude about Algy and General Sangore and the rest of them, perhaps I'd better not take them down with me, because Algy mightn't like it. So I just popped them in the cloakroom meaning to collect them on my way back. But then the fire happened, and — and everything, and I came back in Mr Luker's car, and what with one thing and another I forgot all about them until you started talking about them at the Berkeley. So after last night I thought I'd better see what they were all about."
"And what are they all about?"
"I don't know yet, but they look rather dull. You see, I'd only just started to look at them when you came in. I didn't like to open them on the train, because there were always other people in the carriage, and I didn't know if they might not see something they shouldn't see… You can look at them with me if you like. As a matter of fact, I–I meant you to have them anyway."
Simon gazed at her with the admiration reserved for very special occasions.
"Darling," he said, "how can I ever have managed to misjudge you?"
"But I did, really. You don't think I'd have let Algy have them after what happened last night, do you?"
"Of course not — unless he paid you a much bigger price for compensation."
"Aren't you a beast!" she said.
The Saint sighed.
"Do we have to go into that again?"
She considered him, pouting.
"But you do really like me quite a lot, don't you?"
"Darling, I adore you."
"Well, I hope you do, because if you don't I'm going to scream for help and bring the whole town in. On the other hand, provided you're reasonable…"
The Saint put his hands in his pockets. He was patient to the point of languor, completely sure of the eventual outcome. He could afford to bide his time. These preliminaries were incidental illuminations rather than delays.
"Yes, if I'm reasonable," he said. "Go on. I'm interested."
"What I mean," she said, "is this. You can't get away from the fact that I'm just as much entitled to these papers as you are. If it comes to that, I'm probably more entitled to them, because after all Johnny gave them to me. So if I let you see them, I don't see why we shouldn't work together. You suggested it first, anyway, and after all you do make lots of money, don't you?"
He smiled.
"I keep body and soul together. But do you really think I you'd like being shot at, and having people putting arsenic in your soup and blowing up bombs under your chair and all that sort of thing?"
"I might get used to it."
"Even to finding snakes in your bed?"
"Oh, but I'd expect you to look after me," she said solemnly. "You seem to survive all right, and I expect if I was with you most of the time I'd survive, too. You've got to look after me now, anyhow. It stands to reason that if you got the papers they'll be bound to know you got them from me, and you can't just laugh lightly and walk away and leave me to be slaughtered."