crinkled a thin line into one corner of his mouth; but whether the repugnance was for the two departed killers, or for the manner in which they had been exterminated, he did not know himself. He dismissed the proposition with a shrug, and the careless movement sent a sharp twinge of pain through his injured shoulder to bring him finally back to reality. With an inaudible sigh, he put the gun away in his pocket and turned his eyes back to the girl.
She had not moved from where he had last seen her. The dead body of Maxie lay at her feet; but she was not looking at it, and she had made no attempt to possess herself of the automatic that was still clutched in his hand. The light was too dim for the Saint to be able to see the expression on her face; but the poise of her body reminded him irresistibly of the night when she had watched him kill Morrie Ualino, and more recently of the tune, only an hour or two ago, when he himself had been sent out from the back room of Charley's Place on the ride which had only just ended. There was the same impregnable aloofness, the same inscrutable carelessness of death, as though in some impossible way she had detached herself from every human emotion and dominated even the last mystery of dissolution. He walked up closer to her, slowly, because it hurt him a little when he breathed, until he could see the brightness of her tawny eyes; but they told him nothing.
She did not speak, and he hardly knew what to do. The situation was rather beyond him. He saluted her vaguely, with the ghost of a bow, and let his arm fall to his side.
'Thank you,' he said.
Her eyes were pools of amber, still and unreadable.
'Is that all?' she asked in a low voice.
Again he felt that queer leap of expectation at the husky music which she made of words. He moved his hands in a slight helpless gesture.
'I suppose so. It's the second time you've helped me—-I don't know why. I haven't asked. What else is there?'
'What about this?'
Suddenly, before he knew what she was doing, her arms were around his neck, her soft slenderness pressed close to him, the satin of her cheek against his. For a moment he was too amazed to move. Hazily, he wondered if the terrible strain he had been through had unhinged some weak link in his imagination. The tenuous perfume of her skin and hair stole in upon his senses, sending a creeping trickle of fire along his veins; her lips found his mouth, and for one mad second he was shaken by the awareness of her passion. He winced imperceptibly, and she drew back.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You see, you didn't get here quite soon enough. I stopped one.'
Instantly she forgot everything else. She drew him over to the car, switched on the headlights, and made him take off his coat. With quick, gentle hands she slipped his shirt down over his shoulder; he could feel the warm stickiness of blood on his back. On the ground close by, the chauffeur still lay as if asleep.
'Better make sure he doesn't wake up while you're doing the first aid,' said the Saint, with a rather weary gesture towards the unconscious man.
'He won't wake up,' she answered calmly. 'I killed him.'
Then Simon saw that the shadow between the driver's shoulder blades was the hilt of a small knife, and a phantom chill went through him. He understood now why Maxie's call had gone unanswered. The girl's hands were perfectly steady on his back; he couldn't see her face because she was behind him, but he knew what he would have found there. It would have been masked with the same cold beauty, the same unearthly contempt of life and death and all their associations, which he had only once seen broken—so strangely, only a few moments before.
She fastened his handkerchief and her own over the wound, replaced his shirt, and drew his coat loosely over the shoulder. Her hand rested there lightly.
'You'll have to see a doctor,' she said. 'I know a man in Passaic that we can go to.'
He nodded and moved round to the side of the car. Competently, she lowered the hood over the engine and forestalled him at the wheel. He didn't protest.
It was impossible to turn the car about in the confined space, and she had to back up the lane until they reached the highway. She did it as confidently as he would have expected her to, although he had never met a woman before who had really achieved a complete mastery of the art of backing. Inanimate stones seemed to have become alive, judging by the way they thrust malicious obstacles into the path of the tires and threatened to pitch the car into the shrubbery, but her small right hand on the wheel performed impossible feats. In a remarkably short
