'Oh, we had quite a jolly little party.'
'What happened?'
Simon lighted a cigarette, and inhaled with deep satisfaction.
'Claud Eustace Teal's stomach walked in, closely followed by Claud Eustace. It was most extraordinary. Subsequently, I walked out. Claud Eustace is now thinking that that was even more extraordinary.'
Patricia nodded.
'I saw the men getting into the gardens, and then I drove round to the back and saw the squad car. Did you have much trouble?'
'Nothing to speak of.' The Saint was slewed round in his seat, his keen eyes searching back up the road. 'I pulled Teal's nose, told him a perfectly drawing-room limerick, and left him to think it over. ... I should turn off again here, old darling —they're certain to be after us.'
The girl obeyed.
And then she flashed the Saint a smile, and she said:
'Boy, I was all set to crash that squad car if they'd tried to take you away in it.'
The Saint stared.
'You were which?'
'Sure, I'd have wrecked that car all right.'
'And then?'
'I'd have got you out somehow.'
'Pat, have you gone loco?'
She laughed, and shook her head, hustling the car recklessly down the long clear street.
Simon gazed at her thoughtfully.
It was typical of him that even then he was able to do that— and do it with his whole attention on the job. But the longer you knew him, the more amazing did that characteristic of light-hearted insouciance become. The most tempestuous incidents of his turbulent life occupied just as much of his mind as he allotted to them, and no more. And their claims were repudiated altogether by such a mood of scapegrace devilment as descended upon him at that instant.
He took in the features that he knew even better than his own with a new sense of delight. They stood out fair and clean-cut against the speeding background of sombre buildings—the small nose, the finely modelled forehead, the firm chin, the red lips slightly parted, the eyes gay and shining. The wind whipped a faint flush into her cheeks and swept back her hair like a golden mane. Under her short leather jacket the small high breasts seemed to be pressing forward with the eagerness of youth.
She turned to him, knowing his eyes were on her.
'What are you thinking, lad?'
'I'm thinking that I shall always want to remember you as I'm seeing you now,' said the Saint.
One of the small strong hands came off the wheel and rested on his knee. He covered it with his own.
'I'm glad I was never a gentleman,' he said.
They raced on, carving a wide circle out of the map of London. Traffic crossings delayed them here and there, but they kept as much as possible to unfrequented side streets, and moved fast. Perrigo sat in the back and brooded, with his coat collar turned up over his ears. His cosmos was still in a dizzy whirl, which he was trying to reduce to some sort of coherence. The vicissitudes that had somersaulted upon him from all angles during the past forty-five minutes had hopelessly dislocated his bearings. One minute the Saint was thumping him in the stomach, the next minute he was helping him on with his hat. One minute the Saint was preparing to hoist him, the next minute he was yanking him out of a splice. One minute the Saint seemed to have a direct hook-up with the police, the next minute he was leading the duck-out with all the zeal of an honest citizen avoiding contact with a Member of Parliament. It was a bit too much for Gunner Perrigo, a simple soul for whom the solution of all reasonable problems lay in the breech of a Smith-Wesson.
But out of the chaos one imperishable thought emerged to the forefront of his consciousness, and it was that which motivated his eventual decision. One bifurcated fact stood indefeasible amid the maelstrom. The Saint knew too much, and the Saint had at one time announced his intention of hijacking a certain parcel of diamonds. And the two prongs of that fact linked up and pointed to a single certainty: that the safest course for Gunner Perrigo was to get the hell out of any place where the Saint might
