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near, came the sounds of a melancholy voice raised in inharmonious song; and
the Saint grinned. He opened the door, passing the girl in and closing it
again behind them, and surveyed Mr. Uniatz reprovingly.
"I see you found the whisky," he said.
"Sure," said Mr. Uniatz, rising a trifle unsteadily, but beaming an honest
welcome none the less. "It was in de pantry, jus' like ya tole me, boss."
The Saint sighed.
"It'll never be there again," he said, "unless you lose your way." He was
stripping off his taxi driver's overcoat and peaked cap; and as he did so, in
the full light, the girl recognized him, and he saw her eyes widen. "This
bloke with the skinful is Mr. Hoppy Uniatz, old dear a handy man with a Roscoe
but not so hot on the Higher Thought. If I knew your name I'd introduce you."
"I'm Annette Vickery," said the girl. "But I don't even know who you are."
"I'm Simon Templar," he said. "They call me the Saint."
She caught her breath for an instant; and suddenly she seemed to see him
again for the first time, and the flicker of fear came and went in her brown
eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, lean and dark and dangerous and
debonair, smiling at her with a cigarette between his lips and a wisp of smoke
curling past his eyes; and it is only fair to say that he enjoyed his moment.
But still he smiled, at himself and her.
"Well, I'm not a cannibal," he murmured, "although you may have heard
rumours. Why don't you sit down and let's finish our talk?" She sat down
slowly.
"About pillows?" she said, with the ghost of a smile; and he began to laugh.
"Or something."
He sent Hoppy Uniatz out to the kitchen to brew coffee and gave her a
cigarette. She might have been twenty-two or twenty-three, he saw the
indifferent lighting of Bond Street had had no need to be kind to her. He was
more sure than ever that her red mouth would smile easily and there would be
mischief in the brown eyes; but he would have to lift more than a corner of
the shadow to see those things.
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"I told you the Barnyard Club was no place to go," he said, drawing up a
chair. "Why wouldn't you take my advice?"
"I didn't understand."
All at once he realized that she was crediting him with having known that the
raid was going to take place; but he showed nothing in his face.
"You've got hold of it now?"
She shrugged helplessly.
"Some of it. But I still don't know why you should have bothered to get me
out of the mess."
"That's a long story," he said cheerfully. "You ought to ask Chief Inspector
Teal about it some day he'll be able to tell you more. Somehow, we just seem
to get in each other's way. But if you're * thinking that you owe me something
for it, I'm afraid you're right."
He saw the glimmer of fear in her eyes again; and yet he knew that she was
not afraid of him. She had no reason to be. But she was afraid.
"You kill people don't you?" she said after a long silence.
The question sounded so startlingly naive that he wanted to laugh; but
something told him not to. He drew at his cigarette with a perfectly straight
face.
"Sometimes even fatally," he admitted, with only the veiled mockery in his
eyes to show for that glint of humour. "Why is there anyone you'd like to see
taken off? Hoppy Uniatz will do it for you if I haven't time."
"What do you kill them for?"
"Our scale is rather elastic,'' he said, endeavouring to maintain his
gravity. "Sometimes we have done it for nothing. Mostly we charge by the
yard------"
"I don't mean that." She was smoking her cigarette in short nervous puffs,
and her hands were still unsteady. "I mean, if a man wasn't really bad if
he'd just made a mistake and got into bad company------"
Simon nodded and stood up.
"You're rather sweet," he said humorously. "But I know what you mean. You're
frightened by some of the stories you've heard about me. Well, kid how about
giving your own common sense a chance? I've just lifted you straight out of
the hands of the police. They're looking for you now, and before tomorrow
morning every flat-footed dick in London will be joining in the search. If I
wanted to get tough with you I wouldn't need any third degree I'd just have to
promise to turn you right out into the street if you didn't come through. I
haven't said a word about that, have I?" The Saint smiled; and in the quick
flash of that particular smile the armour of worldlier women than she had
melted like wax. "But I do want you to talk. Come on, now what's it all
about?"
She was silent for a moment, tapping her cigarette over the ashtray long
after all the loose ash had flaked away; and then her hands moved in a
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helpless gesture.
"I don't know."
Her eyes turned to meet his when she spoke, and he knew she was not merely
stalling. He waited with genuine seriousness; and presently she said: "The boy
who got into bad company was my brother. Honestly, he isn't really bad. I
don't know what happened to him. He didn't need to be dishonest he was so
clever. Even when he was a kid at school he could draw and paint like a
professional. Everyone said he had a marvellous future. When he was nineteen
he went to an art school. Even the professors said he was a genius. He used to
drink a bit too much, and he was a bit wild; but that was only because he was
young. I'm eighteen months older than he is, you see. I didn't like some of
his friends. That man who was arrested with me was one of them."
"And what's his name?"
"Jarving Kenneth Jarving. ... I think he used to flatter Tim make him feel he
was being a man of the world. I didn't like him. He tried to make love to me.
But he became Tim's best friend. . . . And then Tim was arrested. For forgery.
And it turned out that Jarving knew about it all the time. He was the head of
the gang that Tim was forging the notes for. But the police didn't get him."
"Charming fellow," said the Saint thoughtfully.
Hoppy Uniatz came in with the coffee, opened his mouth to utter some cheery
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