"It's something to know I'm worth saving a car for," he murmured.
She studied him with a kind of speculative aloofness.
"I like you by daylight. I thought I should."
He returned her survey with equal frankness. She wore a white linen skirt and a cobwebby white blouse, and the lines of her figure were as delicious as he had thought they would be. It would have been easy, effortless, to surrender completely to the blood-quickening enchantment of her physical presence. But between them also was the ghostly presence of Pargo; and a chilling recollection of Pargo's livid distorted face passed before the Saint's eyes as he smiled at her.
"You look pretty good yourself, Brenda," he remarked. "Perhaps it's because that outfit looks a lot more like Bond Street than what you had on last night."
Her poise was momentarily shaken.
"How did you—"
"I'm a detective too," said the Saint gravely. "Only I keep it a secret."
She unlatched the door and swung out her long slender legs. As she was doing so a sleek black sedan swam round the nearest bend, slowing up, and turned in towards the front of the pub. The Saint's right hand stayed in his coat pocket, and his eyes were chips of ice for an instant before the driver got out unconcernedly as the car stopped and walked across to the entrance of the bar. The Saint could almost have laughed at himself but not quite; those reactions were too solidly founded on probabilities to be wholly humorous, and he was still waiting for the purpose of their meeting to be revealed.
The girl didn't seem to have noticed anything. She straightened up as her feet touched the road, flawless as a white statue, with the same impenetrable aloofness. She said: "There's your car. Would you like to take it and drive away? A long way away — to the north of Scotland or Timbuktu or anywhere. At least far enough for you to forget that any of this ever happened."
"The world is so small," Simon pointed out unhappily. "Twelve thousand miles is about the farthest you can get from anything, and that's not very far in these days of high-speed transport. Besides, I don't know that I want to forget. We've still got that date for a stroll in the moonlight—"
"I'm not joking," she said impatiently. "And I haven't got much time. The point is, I found out your name last night, but I didn't know who you were. I suppose I haven't been around enough in that kind of society. But the others knew."
"Look at the advantages of a cosmopolitan education," he observed. "There are more things in this cockeyed world than Bond Street—"
The stony earnestness of her face cut him off.
"This is serious," she said. "Can't you see that? If the others had had their way you wouldn't be here now at all. If you'd been anything else but what you are you wouldn't be here. But they've heard of you, and so it doesn't seem so easy to get rid of you in the obvious way. That's why I'm here to talk to you. If you'll leave us alone it'll be worth a hundred pounds a week to you, and you can draw the first hundred pounds this evening."
"That's interesting," said the Saint thoughtfully. "And where are these hundred travel tickets?"
"There '11 be a man waiting in a car with a GB plate at the crossroads in East Lulworth at half past ten. He'll be able to talk to you if you want to discuss it."
The Saint took her arm.
"Let's discuss it now," he suggested. "There's some very good beer inside—"
"I can't." She glanced a little to his left. "That other car's waiting for me — the one that just arrived. The man who brought it has gone out at the back of the pub, and he's only waiting a little way up the road to see that you don't keep me. It wouldn't be very sensible of you to try because he can see us from where he is, and if I don't pick him up at once there '11 be trouble." Her hand rested on his sleeve for a moment as she disengaged herself. "Why don't you go to Lulworth? It wouldn't hurt you, and it'd be so much easier. After all, what are you doing this for?"
"I might ask what you're doing it for."
"Mostly for fun. And from what they've told me about you, you might just as easily have been on our side. It doesn't do anyone any harm—"
The Saint's smile was as bright as an arctic noon.
"In fact," he said, "you're beginning to make me believe that it really did Pargo a lot of good."
She shrugged.
"You wouldn't have expected us to keep him after we knew he was selling us out to you, would you?" she asked, and the casual way she said it almost took the Saint's breath away.
"Of course not," he answered after a pause in which his brain whirled stupidly.
The dusk had been deepening very quickly, so that he could not be quite sure of the expression in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"Talk it over with your friends," she said in a quick low voice. "Try to go to Lulworth. I don't want anything else to happen… Good-bye. Here's the key of your car."
Her arm moved, and something tinkled along the road. As his eyes automatically turned to try and follow it she slipped aside and was out of his reach. The door of the black sedan slammed, its lights went on, and it rushed smoothly past him with the wave of a white glove. By the time he had found his own ignition key in the gloom where she had thrown it he knew that it was too late to think of trying to follow her.
The Saint's mind was working under pressure as he waited for Peter and Hoppy to join him at the corner of the inn. There was something screwy about that interview — something that made him feel as if part of the foundations of his grasp of the case were slipping away from under him. But for the present his thoughts were too chaotic and nebulous to share with anyone else.
"We've got a date to be shot up at East Lulworth at half past ten," he said cheerfully and gave them a literal account of the conversation.
"They're making you travel a bit before they kill you," said Peter. "Are you going on with this mad idea of yours?"
"It's the only thing to do if we're sticking to our plan of campaign. We're fish on the rise tonight, and we'll go on rising until we get a line if it—"
He broke off with his hand whipping instinctively to his pocket again as a bicycle whirred out of the shadows towards them at racing speed. The brakes grated as it shot by, and a man almost threw himself off the machine and turned back towards them. A moment later the Saint saw that it was Jopley.
"Thank Gawd I caught yer," he gasped. "I was afride it 'ud be too late. Yer mustn't go ter Lulworth tonight!"
"That's a pity," said the Saint tranquilly. "But I just made a date to go there."
"Yer carn't do it, sir! They'll be wytin' for yer wiv a machine gun. I 'eard 'im givin' the orders an' 'ow the lidy was ter meet yer 'ere an' tell yer the tile an' everythink—"
Simon became suddenly alert.
"You heard who giving the orders?" he shot back.
"The boss 'imself it was — 'e's at Gad Cliff 'Ouse naow!
IX
The Saint's lighter flared in the darkness, catching the exultant glint in his eyes under impudently slanted brows. When the light went out and left only the glowworm point of his cigarette it was as if something vital and commanding had been abruptly snatched away, leaving an irreparable void; but out of the void his voice spoke with the gay lilt of approaching climax.
"That's even better," he said. "Then we don't have to go to Lulworth."
"You must be disappointed," Peter said sympathetically. "After looking forward to being shot up with a machine gun—"
"This is easier," said the Saint. "This is the fish sneaking out of the river a little way downstream and wriggling along the bank to bite the fisherman in the pants. Peter, I have a feeling that this is going to be Comrade Lasser's unlucky day."