"You didn't happen to think that Jopley and Borieff were retired churchwardens, did you?"
"No — I hated them. But Lasser said you had to employ anyone you could get for jobs like theirs, and I didn't think even they could go so far." She shrugged, and her eyes were dark with pain. "Well, it's my own fault. I suppose you'll be handing them over to the police, and you'd better take me with you. I shan't give you any trouble. Whatever happens, I'm glad you beat them."
He shook his head.
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any good handing them over to the police," he said. "You see, the Law has such pettifogging rules about evidence."
"But—"
"Oh yes, you could convict them of smuggling, and get them about six months each. But that's all."
"Then—"
He smiled.
"Don't worry about it, darling," he said. "Just stay here for a minute, will you?"
He turned to Peter and Hoppy and indicated Borieff with a faint nod.
"Bring him in," he said and led the way into the next room.
Jopley was cursing and fighting against his bonds, and Lasser had recovered enough to be writhing too. Simon dragged them over to the fireplace and went back to tear down the heavy silk cords that drew the long window hangings. He roped the two men expertly together, and when Borieff arrived he added him to the collection. The other end of the rope he knotted to a bar of the iron grate that was set solidly in the brickwork.
Then he closed the door and looked at Peter and Hoppy, and the smile had gone altogether from his face.
"There's just one thing more which you didn't know," he said quietly. "Comrade Lasser told me about it in here. There's supposed to be a fire here tonight — the place is all prepared for it. And after we'd all been worked over like Pargo was — Borieff was the assistant in that, by the way — whatever else happened, however much we told, the idea was to leave us tied up here with a lighted candle burning down to the floor. We were to be got rid of anyway, and according to Lasser we had to be burnt alive so that it would look like an accident."
The Saint's eyes were as cold and passionless as the eyes of a recording angel.
"We are the only jury here," he said. "What is our justice?"
The Hirondel thundered down into the valley and soared up the slope on the other side. Somewhere near the first crest of the Purbeck Hills Simon stopped the car to take out a cigarette; and through the hushing of the engine his ears caught a familiar gurgling sound that made him look round.
In the back seat Mr Uniatz detached the bottle from his lips and beamed at him ingratiatingly.
"I find it in de cabinet where dey keep de liquor, boss," he explained. "So I t'ought it'd keep us warm on de way home."
"At least you won't freeze to death," said the Saint philosophically.
He turned the other way as he struck his lighter and gazed out into the darkness where the hills rose again at the edge of the sea. Somewhere in the black silhouette of them there was a dull red glow, pulsing and brightening, like a palely luminous cloud. The eyes of the girl beside him turned in the same direction.
"It looks like a fire," she said interestedly.
"So it does," said the Saint and drove on without another backward glance, eastwards, towards Lyndhurst.
Part Three
The Beauty Specialist
I
The fact that Simon Templar had never heard of the "Z-Man" was merely a tremendous proof that the Z-Man himself, his victims and the police authorities had joined forces in a monumental conspiracy of silence, For the Saint invariably had a zephyr finger on the pulse of the underworld, and the various forms of fun and frolic that went on in the ranks of the ungodly without his knowledge were so few that for all practical purposes they might have been regarded as nonexistent.
He was lunching alone at the Dorchester Grill when the first ripple of new adventure irrigated the dusty dryness of a particularly arid spell. He had been ruminating on the perfidious dullness of the cloudy day when the grillroom was suddenly supplied with its own sunshine. A girl had entered.
She was alone. She was tall and trim waisted and as graceful as a dancer, and the soft waves of her fair golden hair rippled in the gentle stir of air caused by her own motion. Exquisitely dressed, devastatingly sure of herself, she was escorted to a vacant table in a sudden hush of awed admiration that enveloped a world-famous film producer, two visiting bishops, three cosmopolitan millionaires, a music-hall comedian, a couple of ancient marquises and about fifty other minor celebrities, in a simultaneous speechlessness of homage. Simon Templar, who had as many human instincts as any of the aforesaid, would have stared at her anyway; but somehow he found himself watching her with even more than that natural curiosity and interest. And a faint tentative tingle went through him as he realized why.
For an instant, when he had first raised his eyes and seen her, he had wondered if Patricia Holm had missed an appointment of her own and had come to join him. This girl was surprisingly like Pat; the same height, the same fair grace, the same radiant charm. There was something vaguely familiar about her face too; and now the Saint was no longer reminded of Pat. He wondered who she was, and he was not the kind of man to be satisfied with wondering.
"Tell me, Alphonse," he murmured to the waiter who was hovering about him like a ministering angel, "who is the vision in smoke blue at that table over there?"
The waiter looked across the room.
"That, sir," he said, with a certain visible contempt for such ignorance, "is Miss Beatrice Avery."
Simon wrinkled his brow.
"The name strikes a chord but fails to connect."
"Miss Avery is a film star, sir."
"So she is. I've seen photographs of her here and there."
"Her latest picture, Love, the Swindler is the best thing she's done," volunteered the waiter dreamily. "Have you seen it, sir?"
"Fortunately, no," answered the Saint, glancing with some pain at the waiter's enraptured face, and then averting his own. "Swindlers have never interested me — much."
The waiter departed, hurt, and Simon continued to watch the girl at the other table. It was only a transient interest which held him, his inevitable interest in any exceptionally beautiful girl, coupled with the additional fact, perhaps, that Beatrice Avery was certainly a great deal like Pat… And then in an instant, as if an invisible magic wand had been waved, his interest became concrete and vital. He flipped out his cigarette case and put a smoke between his lips. Nobody could have guessed that his attention was more than casually attracted as he lighted the cigarette and inhaled deeply; the sudden lambent glint that came into his blue eyes was masked behind their lazy lids and the filmy curtain of smoke that trickled from his nostrils. But in that instant he knew with the blissful certainty of experience that the syncopated clarions of adventure had sounded in the room, even if no other ears were tuned to hear them.
As the girl had seated herself a waiter had deftly removed the "reserved" card which had been conspicuously displayed on the table, and the cloud of obsequiously fluttering chefs de restaurant, maitres d'hotel, waiters, commis and miscellaneous bus boys had faded away. Evidently she had intimated that she was not yet ready to order. The girl had then given the grillroom a thoughtful once-over as she removed her gloves and lighted a cigarette. These trifling details Simon had noticed while his own waiter was burbling about Love, the Swindler. All very proper and correct — and commonplace. But that which followed was not commonplace at ail. Beatrice Avery's cigarette suddenly dropped from her fingers to the floor, and the colour drained out of her face until the patches of rouge on her cheeks and bright-tinted lips stood out in vivid contrast to the deathly pallor of her skin. Her eyes grew wide and glazed with terror, and she stared at the table as though a snake had suddenly appeared through a hole in the snowy cloth.