Simon hadn't the remotest idea what it was all about. That was the common factor of most adventures — you usually didn't until you were well into them. The difference between the Saint and most other men was that most other men were satisfied to wonder and let it go at that; whereas the Saint had to find out. And Simon Templar had discovered after some years of experiment that the most direct way of finding anything out was to go and ask somebody who knew. Characteristically he didn't hesitate for a second. Almost without any conscious decision on his part his seventy-two inches of lean, debonair immaculacy had unfolded from their chair and were sauntering across to Beatrice Avery's table; and he was smiling down at her with sapphire lights twinkling in gay blue eyes that few women had ever been able to resist.
"Could you use an unemployed knight-errant?" he murmured.
The girl seemed to shrink back. Some of the colour had returned to her face, but her eyes were more terrified than ever. He could see at close quarters that her resemblance to Pat was purely superficial. She had none of that calm ethereal tranquillity that was Pat's very own. She opened her bag as if she was too dazed and desperate to have grasped what he was saying.
"I didn't expect you so soon," she said breathlessly.
He was a bit slow on the repartee for two reasons. First he was wondering why she had expected him at all; and secondly he was searching the square of snowy whiteness with its gleaming glass and silver for some explanation of the frozen horror that he had seen in her face. Everything was in order except for the fact that a knife and two forks were out of their correct places and laid in a peculiar zigzag. Even the most fastidious stickler for table ceremony would hardly have registered quite so much horror at that displacement of feeding tools, and Beatrice Avery looked like the healthily unceremonious kind of girl who wouldn't have cared a hoot if all the knives and forks and spoons were end up in a flowerpot in the middle of the table.
"I came over as soon as you sent out the distress signals," Simon began and then he stopped short out of sheer incredulous startlement.
The girl had taken something from her bag, and she was looking at him with such an expression that the words died a natural death on his lips. She had conquered her fear; and instead of the terror that had been there before her eyes were charged with so much loathing and hatred and disgust that Simon Templar knew just what it felt like to be one of those wriggly things with too many legs that make their abode under flat stones. The reaction was so amazing and unexpected that for once in his life the Saint was at a loss for words. He invariably had such a totally different effect on beauteous damsels in distress that his self-esteem as though it had been hit by a coal truck.
"I have nothing whatever to say to you." The girl suddenly thrust a bulky envelope into his hand and rose. "But if you have any regard at all for my feelings please return at once to your own table."
Her voice was low and musical, but it had in it the bitter chill of an arctic night. She didn't even look at him again, or she would have seen the utter bewilderment in his eyes. She closed her red mouth very tightly and walked with a steady tread and long, exquisitely graceful legs towards the exit. Simon was convinced that she had never done anything half so fine before the camera.
He stood and watched her out of sight and then returned slowly to his own table in a kind of seething fog. The manhattan he had ordered earlier had arrived, and he drank it quickly. He felt that he needed it. And then in a hazy quest for enlightenment he took another look at the envelope which she had left in his paralyzed hands. It was not sealed; and the numbed feeling in the pit of his stomach tightened as he glanced into it.
"Well, well, well!" he murmured softly.
His tanned face hardened into bronze lines of puzzled concentration, with his eyes steadied into fragments of blued steel against the sunburned background, for the envelope was stuffed full with Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds apiece.
He withdrew the ends and flicked his thumb over them. Without careful counting he calculated that the wad contained about a hundred bills — ten thousand genuine and indisputable pounds. After his recent experience and in spite of the manhattan he was in no condition to resist shocks of that kind. Boodle he had seen in his time, boodle in liberal quantities and many different forms, but he had always worked for it. He had never seen it come winging into his hands when he wasn't even looking for it, like pigeons going home to roost. At any other time he would have been inclined to accept it as one of the many inexplicable beneficences of his devoted guardian angel; but he didn't feel like that now.
He couldn't get that look of hers out of his mind. It hurt his pride that she could have mistaken him for the common and vulgar agent of some equally common and vulgar blackmailer. It seemed obvious enough that that was what had happened… But was it? Simon didn't know exactly how many dazzling figures it took to write down Beatrice Avery's annual income, but he knew that film stars were burdened with hardly less colossal living expenses, for they have to scintillate off the screen as well as on or else risk submersion in the fathomless swamps of public forgetfulness. And the Saint doubted very much if Beatrice Avery, for all her fabulous salary, could afford to whack out ten thousand pounds as if it were chicken feed. A sum like that spoke for a grade of blackmail that could hardly be called common or vulgar: it hinted at something so dark and ugly that his imagination instinctively tried to turn away from it. He didn't like to believe that such a golden goddess could have anything in her past that she would pay so much to keep secret. It made him feel queerly grim and angry.
He finished his lunch, paid his bill and then looked up the name of Beatrice Avery in the telephone directory. Her address appeared as 21 Parkside Court, Marble Arch. Simon made a mental note of it, paid a call in Piccadilly and then strolled along to his own apartment in Cornwall House.
"Anybody called, Sam?" he inquired of the wooden-faced janitor; and Sam Outrell detected a faintly thoughtful note in the Saint's voice.
"Were you expecting somebody, sir?"
"I'm always expecting somebody. But this afternoon, in particular, I shall expect a lady, gloriously fair and graceful, with wavy golden hair—"
"I know, sir. You mean Miss Holm."
"No, I don't mean Miss Holm," said Simon as he strolled to the elevator. "The lady's name, Sam, is Miss Avery. If she appears before you with my name on her rosebud lips shoot her straight up."
He was whisked to his floor, and as he let himself into his apartment he found Hoppy Uniatz in the living room's best easy chair with his feet on the table. Mr Uniatz was chewing the ragged end of a cigar, and there was an expression on his battle-scarred face which indicated that all was right with the world. The empty whisky bottle on the table may have contributed its own modest quota to this happy state of affairs.
"Hi, boss," said Mr Uniatz cordially. "Where ya bin?"
Simon spun his hat across the room.
"Lunching at the Dorchester."
"I got no time for dem fancy places," said Mt Uniatz disparagingly. "Dose pansy dishes ain't nut'n to eat. Now yesterday I find a swell jernt where a guy can get a kosher hamboiger wit' fried onions an' all de fixin's—"