“You really shouldn’t play with things like this,” he said gently. “It belongs in the kitchen, after all, along with grapefruit and women.”
Her teeth were set with fury, and suddenly without a sound she exploded and grabbed for his knife hand. He effortlessly evaded the lunge and caught her hard up against him, pinning her strong upper arms against her ribs.
“You are a vicious bird, aren’t you?” he chided.
“You’re a pig!” she spat.
Wishing to get free, she managed to raise her left hand almost to the level of his face. Just in time he realised that she was consciously doing something with her thumb to the inner part of a massive golden ring on her fourth finger. As her hand flexed he tilted his head aside and pushed her wrist away from him with his free hand.
In that instant there was a barely audible fizzle, and an almost microscopic quantity of some gaseous vapour puffed feebly from the centre of the heavily wrought metal of the ring, most of it into the girl’s own eyes.
“Curse!” she exploded.
Then she was coughing and squeezing her eyelids tightly shut, and tears were streaming down the freckled, milk-smooth skin of her cheeks.
Simon was supporting her rather than holding her against her will, and she was making no more effort to get away.
“What was that supposed to be?” he enquired kindly.
“Go ahead,” she growled. “Kill me. Get it over with.”
“That’s a very tempting suggestion, but I need you too much — for the moment.” He tossed the kitchen knife on to a sofa and lifted her left hand so that he could inspect the golden ring. “Is that Renaissance poison-squirter — something you got out of a breakfast-food box?”
She rubbed her eyes with her free hand.
“It’s a tear-gas ring,” she answered sullenly. “Or at least it’s supposed to be. It always worked when I was testing it.”
“It seems like a terribly inefficient form of suicide,” he said. “Something like trying to fold yourself to death in an ironing board. Most people find that shooting themselves with guns works pretty well.”
One corner of her mouth switched in what suspiciously resembled the germination of a smile.
“I don’t have a gun!” she snapped, killing the smile. “And if the damn thing had worked you’d have got the tear gas right in your face.”
“And afterwards you’d have cracked me over the head with a table lamp?” he suggested.
“Preferably with a poker,” she replied.
He let her go, and she stepped back rubbing her shoulder to convey the false impression that he had hurt it. In spite of the fiercely belligerent expression on her face he deduced that the war was over and that the next step was to define the conditions of peace.
“Well, love at first sight is dandy,” he said, “but isn’t it time we got on with more serious things? May I sit down?”
“Apparently I can’t stop you.”
He settled on to the sofa, flipped the long kitchen knife up into the air by its point and caught it by its handle, all the while smiling at her in the most dazzlingly benign way imaginable.
“Well?” she asked, unimpressed.
“It’s very nice to be here,” he said. “It isn’t every day I meet a fearless girl reporter. They should print your picture along with your articles.”
“Why?”
“It would boost circulation, for one thing.”
Once more a bit of sun threatened to break through her cloudy expression, but she fought it back and with mock symptoms of muscular anguish perched on the arm of an overstuffed chair opposite him. The pretence of pain struck him as a fascinating plea for sympathy beneath her granite outer layers.
“You may be the Saint,” she said, “but I’ll bet you’re here spying for another newspaper, trying to nose in on all my research.”
“Even you don’t believe that,” Simon responded casually. “Or else you’re the wildest romantic since Richard Strauss. I’ll tell you why I’m here: you’re an expert on the immigrant-blackmail racket...” He stopped and nodded towards the television set, which had been on the periphery of his mind for some time. “And speaking of racket, couldn’t we cut down the volume of that mayhem?”
“It’s my telly and I’ll play it as flaming loud as I please!” she retorted defiantly.
Simon sighed.
“I’m sure you will. I assume that an obnoxious pugnaciousness is a permanent part of your character?”
She got up and turned the volume of the television down and — even more unexpectedly — actually smiled.
“Impertinence is the word,” she said. “I’m impertinent, because my face is impertinent. It’s my nose and mouth.” She prodded those features with her fingertips as if they were made of soft clay. “My nose is too small and my mouth is too big. They make me look impertinent even when I’m not, so I always used to get the blame for everything no matter what I did, so I reckoned if I were going to be accused of being impertinent anyway I might as well be impertinent.”
“And pugnacious,” the Saint insisted.
“Right.” She gave him a silent tigerish snarl. “Now tell me what you’re doing here before I gobble you up.”
“Fine,” said Simon. “Much to my subsequent regret I got interested in this immigration mess, read your article, and got involved. I came over here to see if you could help me. That’s it.”
“Just like that?” she asked sceptically. “Why are you interested? What got you involved? I thought you never got yourself into messes unless you were sure you could come out with a profit.”
“The rewards of virtue have a way of not guaranteeing themselves until after you’ve committed yourself. I’m a speculator, you see, as well as a friend of the downtrodden. Now let’s make this a two-way interview: since you obviously couldn’t have known I was coming for a little tete-a-tete, how come you were hiding behind the door with the welcome mat ready to toss over my head?”
The girl glanced at the blessedly silent television screen, where an almost perfectly cubical blackbearded man was bouncing a rubber boned African to and fro across the ring. Then she sat down.
“If you did read my article today you know the gang that killed that Pakistani last night threatened to cut me up if I said too much.” She shrugged. “I thought you might be one of them.”
“Now that you know different, how about telling me all about the rest of your singlehanded campaign against these thugs? I assume it’s singlehanded.”
“It is,” she replied, “but I don’t see why I should tell you anything. This is my living, friend, and even if you are the Saint how do I know you’re not working for somebody who’s not on my side?”
“As you grow to know and love me I’m sure you’ll realise just how ludicrous that suggestion is. For one thing, why should anybody with my ill-gotten riches want to become an undercover agent for anybody — especially some tight-fisted scandal sheet?”
She shrugged uneasily.
“Why should anybody with the loot you’re supposed to have stashed away want to do anything — except spend it?”
“Because life is action,” Simon said. “Is that good enough for you?”
“No.”
“You’re hard to please.”
“You’re right. If I wasn’t I’d still be juggling paper clips in some back office — and I wouldn’t be single at the ripe old age of twenty-six.”
“Getting worried about that?” Simon asked with a grin.
“No,” she said with determined carelessness. “I didn’t say I couldn’t please, I said I was hard to please.”