"Probably."
Her eyes were big and docile, asking you to write your own meaning in them.
"Why couldn't you?"
"I've got a job to do," he said.
"Is it that important?"
"Yes."
"I know it must be… But is it going on for ever?"
"I hope not."
"Mightn't it be over quite soon?"
"Yes," he said. "It might be over quite soon."
"Very soon?"
He nodded with an infinitesimal smile that was more inscrutable than complete expressionlessness.
"Yes," he said, "it might be very soon indeed."
"Then you must have been finding out things! Do you really know who all your villains are — what it's all about, and who's doing everything, and so on? I mean did you find your Axis agents or whoever they are?"
He lighted a cigarette and looked at her quite lazily. "I've been rather slow up to now — I don't know what's been the matter with me," he confessed. "But I think I'm just coming out of the fog. You have these dull spells in detecting. It isn't all done by inspiration and rushing about, firing guns and leaping through windows. Sometimes a very plodding investigation of people's pasts, and present brings out much more interesting things. I think mine are going to be very interesting."
Her gaze went over his face for a little while; and her mouth looked soft in an absentminded way, or perhaps it was always like that.
She lighted a cigarette herself, and there was a silence that might have held nothing at all.
"Daddy's coming up to Westport tonight," she said.
"Oh, is he?" Every one of the Saint's inflections and expressions was urbane and easy; only the soaring away of his mind had left nothing but a shell of the forms and phrases.
"Why don't you drive up with me and have dinner, and you can meet him when he gets there? We can find you a bed, too."
"I'd love to. But I've got my job."
"Can't she take care of herself at all?"
"Not at the moment."
"Are you — more than professionally interested?"
He caught the flash in her words, but he didn't let it bring a spark back from him.
"I'm sorry," he smiled. "I just couldn't go to Westport tonight."
She said: "Daddy's very interested in you. I broke down and told him about our talk last night. He thinks you're a pretty sensational person, and he's very anxious to meet you. He said he wanted to tell you something that he thinks you ought to know."
The Saint was aware of a fleeting touch of impalpable fingers on his spine.
"What was it about?"
"He didn't say. But he wanted me to be very sure and tell you. And he doesn't make much fuss about anything unless it's important."
"Then we'll certainly have to get together on it."
"What about tomorrow?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"If you find you can get away," she said, "you've only got to call us. We don't dine till eight, and any time up till then… Will you do that?"
"Sure," he said, with just the right amount of politely meaningless promise.
"Let me give you our number in Westport."
He wrote it down.
"Your father isn't going home till late?" he said idly.
"No. He's got one of those awful business conferences. I'd have waited for him if I had anything to do." She pouted at her empty glass. "Why don't you get me another drink, sweetie?"
"I'm sorry."
He gave the order; and she sat back and reflected his gaze with blue eyes as pale and vacant as a clear spring sky.
"Are you staying in town tonight?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Here."
He had only just decided that, but it struck him as a convenient step with a multitude of enticing possibilities.
She brightened her cigarette with a deep fretful inhalation.
"Why do you have to play so hard to get?" she demanded abruptly.
"I suppose I must be anti-social."
"I think you're wonderful."
"So do I. But maybe I have eccentric tastes."
"You.don't like me."
"I don't really know you."
"You could do something about that."
It was quite plain to him that he could. It had been just as plain at their first meeting; but he hadn't given it any serious thought. Now he knew exactly why he had kept Andrea Quennel for his own special assignment, and what he had to do about it, because this was the part he had been cast for without even asking for it. Perhaps in a way he had known for several hours that it would come to this, without thinking about it, so that there was no shock when he had to realise that the time was there.
Two more dry Martinis arrived, and he raised his glass to the level of his mouth again; but this time he knew that it was a sword.
"Here's to crime," he said, and she smiled back.
"That sounds more like you."
Deliberately he let his eyes survey her again, and they did not stop at the neck. There wasn't a blush in her. She gave him back glance for glance, her red lips moist and parted. He let about half the calculated reserve soften out of his face.
"I told you I'd been a bit slow," he murmured. "Maybe I've been missing something."
"Want to reform?"
"It seems as if it might be more fun to degenerate."
"I could have fun watching you degenerate."
Then she pouted again.
"But," she said, "you're so frightfully busy…"
He knew just where he was going now, and he had no scruples about it. He was even going to enjoy it if he could.
"I've got some things that I must do," he said. "I can't get out of that. But I could get through a lot of them by eight o'clock. If you'd like to meet me then, we could nibble a hamburger and spend a few hours making up some lost time. Would that tempt you?"
"My resistance has been low ever since I met you," she said, and touched his hand with her fingers.
His mind was totally dispassionate, but there were human responses over which the mind held very nominal control. He was very much aware of the way her breathing lifted the roundness under her clinging sweater, and the eagerness that went out to him from her face. And he had a disturbing intuition, against all cynical argument, that her part in the game was no harder for her to play than his was for him.
Which was a good idea to forget quickly.
He said: "I'll have to get started if I'm not going to keep you waiting at eight o'clock. Let's meet at Louis-and-Armand's. We can fight out the rest of it over dinner."
"We won't fight," she said. "I'll chase around and see if I can find Daddy and tell him I'm not going straight home: And I'll see you at eight."
"I always seem to be giving you a sort of bum's rush," he remarked, "and here it is again."
She shook her head. She was suddenly very gay.
"Tonight is different, darling. Do you think it was Fate that made me see you outside the Roosevelt?"
"It could have been."
They drained their glasses while he waited for the check, and presently he took her outside and opened the door of her car for her. She got in and adjusted her skirt without any particular haste.
"I'll wait for you," she said. "You wouldn't stand me up, would you?"
"Not tonight, for a dictator's ransom," he answered lightly, and watched her drive away with the lines around his mouth smoothed in sober introspection.
He went back into the lobby, found a writing table, and enclosed a postcard announcing the forthcoming appearance of Larry Adler in an envelope which he addressed to Mr. Frank Imberline. He took the envelope over to the desk and put it down there, moving away at once and unnoticed behind the ample cover of the woman to whom the room clerk was talking. From the other side of the lobby he watched until the woman billowed off, and the clerk found the envelope, glanced at the name, time-stamped it, and put it in one of the pigeonholes behind him.