The Saint paid for his calls and the use of the room, and sauntered out. He took a roundabout route to his destination, turned three or four corners, without once looking back, and paused to look in a shop window in the Rue du Casino. In an angle of the plate glass he caught a reflection—of pale brick-red socks.
Item Two. ... So Vogel's affability had not been entirely unpremeditated. Perhaps it had been carefully planned from the start. It would have been simplicity itself for the sleuth to pick him up when he was identified by sitting with Vogel and Yule at the cafe.
Not that the situation was immediately serious. The pink-hosed spy might have discovered that Simon Templar had rented a room and made some telephone calls, but he wasn't likely to have discovered much more. And that activity was not fundamentally suspicious. But with Vogel already on his guard, it would register in the score as a fact definitely to be accounted for. And the presence of the man who had observed it added its own testimony to the thoroughness with which the fact would doubtless be scrutinised.
The Saint's estimation of Kurt Vogel went up another grim notch. In that dispassionate efficiency, that methodical examination of every loophole, that ruthless elimination of every factor of chance or guesswork, he recognised some of the qualities that must have given Vogel his unique position in the hierarchy of racketeers—the qualities that must have been fatally underestimated by those three nameless scouts of Ingerbeck's, who had not come home. . . .
And which might have been underestimated by the fourth.
The thought checked him in his stride for an almost imperceptible instant. He knew that Loretta Page was ready to be told that she was suspected, but was she ready for quite such an inquisitorial surveillance as this?
He turned into the next tobacconist's and gained a breathing space while he purchased a pack of cigarettes. To find out, he had to shake off his own shadow. And it had to be done in such a way that the shadow did not know he was being intentionally shaken off, because an entirely innocent young man in the role Simon had set himself would never discover that he was being shadowed anyway.
He came out and walked more quickly to the corner of the Rue Levasseur. A disengaged taxi met him there, almost as if it had been timed for the purpose, and he stopped it and swung on board without any appearance of undue haste, but with a movement as swift and sure as an acrobat's on the flying trapeze.
"À la gare," he said; and the taxi was off again without having actually reached a standstill.
Looking back through the rear window, he saw the pink socks piling into another cab a whole block behind. He leaned forward as they rushed into the Place de la République.
"Un moment," he said in the driver's ear. "Il faut que j'aille premièrement à la Banque Boutin."
The driver muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath, trod on the brakes, and spun the wheel. By his limited lights, he was not without reason, for the Banque de Bretagne and Travel Agency of M. Jules Boutin are at the eastern end of the Rue Levasseur—in exactly the opposite direction from the station.
They reeled dizzily round the corner of the Rue de la Plage, with that sublime abandon of which only French chauffeurs and suicidal maniacs are capable, gathered speed, and hurtled around another right-hand hairpin into the Boulevard Féart. Simon looked back again, and saw no sign of the pursuit. There were three other possible turnings from the hairpin junction which they had just circumnavigated; and the Saint had no doubt that his pink-socked epilogue, having lost them completely on that sudden swerve out of the Place de la République, and not expecting any such treacherous manoeuvre, was by that time frantically exploring routes in the opposite direction.
They turned back into the Rue Levasseur; and to make absolutely certain the Saint changed his mind again and ordered another twist north to the post office. He paid off the driver and plunged into a telephone booth.
She was in. She said she had been writing some letters.
"Don't post 'em till I see you," said the Saint. "What's the number of your room?"
"Twenty-eight. But——"
"I'll walk up as if I owned it. Can you bear to wait?"
4
She was wearing a green silk robe with a great silver dragon crawling round it and bursting into fire-spitting life on her shoulders. Heaven knew what she wore under it, if anything; but the curve of her thigh sprang up in a sheer sweep of breath-taking line to her knee as she turned. The physical spell of her wove a definite hiatus in between his entrance and his first line.
"I hope I intrude," he said.
The man who was with her scowled. He was a hard-faced, hard-eyed individual, rather stout, rather bald, yet with a solid atmosphere of competence and courage about him.
"Loretta—how d'ya know this guy's on the rise?"
"I don't," she said calmly. "But he has such a nice clean smile."
"Just a home girl's husband," murmured the Saint lightly. He tapped a cigarette on his thumb-nail, and slanted his brows sidelong at the objector. "Who's the young heart's delight?"
She shrugged.
"Name of Steve Murdoch."
"Of Ingerbeck's?"
"Yes."
"Simon to you," said the Saint, holding out his hand.
Murdoch accepted it sullenly. Their grips clashed, battled in a sudden straining of iron wrists; but neither of them flinched. The Saint's smile twitched at his lips, and some of the sullenness went out of the other's stare.
"Okay, Saint," Murdoch said dourly. "I know you're tough. But I don't like fresh guys."
"I hate them, myself," said the Saint unblushingly. He sat on the arm of a chair, making patterns in the atmosphere with cigarette-smoke. "Been here long?"
"Landed at Cherbourg this morning."
"Did you ask for Loretta downstairs?"
"Yeah."
"Notice anyone prick up his ears?"
Murdoch shook his head.
"I didn't look."
"You should have," said the Saint reprovingly. "I didn't ask, but I looked. There was a bloke kicking his heels in a corner when I arrived, and he had watchdog written across his chest in letters a foot high. He didn't see me, because I walked through with my face buried inside a newspaper; but he must have seen you. He'd 've seen anyone who wasn't expecting him, and he was placed just right to hear who was asked for at the desk."
There was a short silence. Loretta leaned back against a table with her hands on the edge and her long legs crossed.
"Did you know Steve was here?" she asked.
"No. He only makes it more difficult. But I discovered that a ferret-faced bird with the most beautiful line in gent's half hose was sitting on my tail, and that made me think. I slipped him and came round to warn you." Simon looked at her steadily. "There's only a trace of suspicion attached to me at the moment, but Vogel's taking no chances. He wants to make sure. There's probably a hell of a lot of suspicion about you. so you weren't likely to be forgotten. And apparently you haven't been. Now Steve has rolled up to lend a hand—he's branded himself by asking for you, and he'll be a marked man from this moment."
"That's okay," said Murdoch phlegmatically. "I can look after myself without a nurse."
"I'm sure you can, dear old skunk," said the Saint amiably. "But that's not the point. Loretta, at least, isn't supposed to be looking after herself. She's the undercover ingenue. She isn't supposed to have anything to look after except her honour. Once she starts any Mata Hari business, that boat is sunk."