“I’ve only seen him once before in my life. We met in Lisbon when I first got there and found out we were both coming here — so we made a date.”
She paused, and the Saint nodded acknowledgement.
“I’m a very lucky man, as you can see, Inspector,” he said gallantly.
“I have heard of your remarkable luck,” the inspector replied with some irony. “And this absence of yours this evening — this was because of your date?”
He spoke “date” with quotation marks around it, as a foreign word he found faintly distasteful and amusing.
“That’s right,” said Vicky.
Edval looked at his watch.
“It was not a very long date, was it?”
There was an edge of sarcasm on Simon’s voice as he interrupted.
“I was aware of Swiss efficiency,” he said, “but I never knew that it extended to timing the social engagements of tourists.”
Inspector Edval compressed his lips and exercised self-control.
“My excuses if I have offended anyone.” He handed the passport back to Vicky. “Thank you, mademoiselle. I do not see how I can doubt the testimony of a young lady with such a fresh new passport and such a charming and honest face.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little uncomfortably.
“I hope you will forgive me, too, for any insinuations, Monsieur Templar, but when the Saint is in the vicinity of any unusual happening it must be routine to make sure he is not connected with it.”
“You are absolved,” said the Saint benevolently. “Go, and my blessings be with you.”
The inspector almost smiled, but covered his embarrassment at that near slip by mumbling a few final words about Jaeger as he went to the door.
“It is possible,” he said, “that he was attempting to steal something, and fell to his death while trying to climb from one room to another outside the hotel.”
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Simon said with admiration. “I’m sure that if you follow up that theory you’ll have the case closed in no time.”
“Merci,” said Inspector Edval, and left.
Vicky collapsed into a chair and closed her eyes as Simon moved back from closing the door.
“Wonderful to watch the professional police mind at work, isn’t it?” he commented.
“To think you’ve been going through this all your life,” Vicky said. “I couldn’t even take another day of it.”
“And now I suppose you expect to be paid off for your part in this little drama we’ve just been through,” the Saint said.
Vicky looked up at him.
“You don’t have to be nasty about it,” she said.
“I’m not being nasty,” he replied. “I’m being practical.”
Vicky got up from the chair, and as she talked she meandered with conspicuous inconspicuousness to the general area of the door through which Edval had made his exit.
“You think nobody does anything without an angle, don’t you?” she asked huffily.
“Well, darling,” Simon answered, “I’m much too modest to kid myself that you lied to that rather trusting Swiss Sherlock because you just suddenly fell in love with me.”
“I should say not!” Vicky responded indignantly. “I guess it wouldn’t occur to you that I might have felt an obligation to you — because even if you did knock Jaeger or Norden or whoever he was out of the window, it was only what I’d have wanted to do if I’d known who he really was.”
“Maybe so,” said the Saint. “But I’m also sure you realized you couldn’t let me be pinched while I had this little package in my pocket.”
She gave him credit for accurate divination by a moment of stymied silence.
“But anyway,” she said belligerently, “you admit I got you out of a jam, so how about your obligation?”
The Saint was now lounging casually on the sofa with his long legs crossed in front of him, while the girl was still standing next to the closed door.
“First,” he said, “may I ask why you’re loitering over there on the threshold?”
“So I can get out in case you take it into your head to throw me out of the window!”
She tried to say it with the same sting that she had summoned a few seconds before.
“You forget what a mercenary pirate’s mind I have,” Simon said impudently. “I’d never toss a prize like you overboard — I’d sell you to the slave traders.” As an afterthought he added, “Or keep you for myself.”
Her eyes met Simon’s roguish blue ones, and in the next moment she blushed, but looked completely reassured.
“You changed the subject,” she said. “I’ve told you why I was standing by the door. Now you tell me what you intend to do about that stuff my father told me how to get.”
“Ill take some convincing before I’m ready to admit that it belongs to either one of us. But first let’s see what it is.”
He pulled the thin packet from inside his coat and put it on the polished mahogany surface of the coffee table in front of the sofa where he was sitting. Vicky had lost her fear so completely that she came and sat next to him.
“I don’t care who it belonged to,” she said, “or what it is. I think I’ve earned a share of it.”
“And so have I,” he asserted. “So let’s find out if there’s enough in it for both of us — or if this is just one more of your father’s boyish pranks.”
He peeled off the adhesive tapes which secured the oilcloth package and then began to unfold the black wrapping itself. Beside him, Vicky perched on the edge of her sofa cushion and clenched her hands together in tense excitement. Simon laid back the last fold of oilcloth. There in the middle lay a slightly oversized white envelope.
“Oh no!” Vicky groaned. “Not another one!”
She let herself flop back in the sofa, and her hands fell in limp despair at her sides.
“Next stop Bangkok or Tel Aviv,” agreed the Saint. “It looks as if Dad has an almost inexhaustible sense of suspense — or maybe he figured that if he made the puzzle long enough anybody but a devoted blood-relative would give up long before he got to the end of the line.”
“You won’t want it, then,” said Vicky.
As she spoke she moved with a suddenness and speed that would have given a jaguar twinges of envy. She pounced on the envelope, snatched it up, turned the coffee table over against the Saint’s legs, and bolted for the door.
2
Before Vicky could get the door open the Saint had disengaged himself from the coffee-table obstacle she had thrown in his path and was halfway across the room after her. While she was still fumbling desperately with the lock he caught her, pinned her arms more or less at her sides with one of his arms, and tried to get the envelope out of her hand.
She struggled furiously, holding the envelope out of his reach behind her for as long as she could. Then his patiently applied superior strength paid off, and the envelope was once more in his possession.
“Trusting little soul, aren’t you?” he remarked, still gripping her firmly. “Trustworthy, too.”
Vicky squirmed helplessly and winced with rage.
“Anybody would be crazy to trust you, you... you rattlesnake!”
Simon clucked sadly and released his hold on her.
“It pains me to think that you could turn on your friend, counsellor, and protector like this, at a moment which I’d have thought would be marked by joyful gratitude and adoring thanks.”
“You’ll keep it all for yourself!” she said accusingly, rubbing her arm where he had gripped it.
“I gather you have some advance dope on the contents of this little prize package that you haven’t shared with your faithful comrade. In that case you may not be inquisitive enough to want to stick around for the grand opening — so please feel free to leave.”