time they had broken through the trees and swung around in the main road; and the powerful sedan, responding instantly to the pressure of her foot on the accelerator, whirled away like the wind towards Passaic. The Saint saw no other car near the side road and was compelled to repeat Maxie's question.
'How did you get here?'
'I was in the trunk behind,' she explained. 'Hunk was hanging around so long that I thought I'd never be able to get out. That's why I was late.'
The strident horn blared a continuous warning to slower cars as the speedometer needle flickered along the dial. She drove fast, flat out, defiantly, yet with a cold machine-tooled precision of hand and eye that took the recklessness out of her contempt for every other driver's rights to the road. Perhaps, as they scrambled blasphemously out of her path, they caught a glimpse of her fair hair and pale careless face as she flashed by, like a valkyrie riding past on the gales of death.
Simon lay back in his corner and lighted a cigarette. His shoulder was throbbing more painfully, and he was glad to rest. But the puzzle in his mind went on. It was the second time she had intervened, this time to save his life; and he was still without a reason. Except—the obvious one. There seemed to be no doubt about that; although until that moment she had never spoken a word to him. The Saint had lived his life. He had philandered and roistered with the best, and done it as he did most other things, better than any of them; but in that mad moment when she had kissed him he had felt something which was unlike anything else in his experience, something of which he could almost be afraid. . . .
He was too tired to go deeper into it then. Consciously, he tried to postpone the accounting which would be forced on him soon enough; and he was relieved when the lights of Passaic sprang up around them, even though he realized that that only lessened the time in which he must make up his mind.'
The girl stopped the car before a small house on the outskirts of the town and climbed out. Simon hesitated.
'Hadn't you better wait here?' he suggested. 'If this bird is connected with your mob——'
'He isn't. Come on.'
She was ringing the bell when he reached the door. After a lengthy interval the doctor opened it, sleepy-eyed and dishevelled, in his shirt and trousers. He was a swarthy, stocky man with a loose lower lip and rather prominent eyes which shifted salaciously behind thick pebble glasses—Simon would not have cared to take his wife there, but nevertheless the doctor's handling of the present circumstances was commendable in every way. After one glance at the Saint's stained shirt and empty sleeve he led the way to his surgery and lighted the gas under a sterilizing tray.
He gave the Saint a long shot of brandy and proceeded to wash his hands methodically in a cracked basin.
'How've you been keeping, Fay?' he asked.
'Pretty well,' she replied casually. 'How about you?'
He grunted, drying his hands.
'I've been fairly busy. I haven't taken a vacation since I went to the Chicago exhibition.'
The bullet had entered the Saint's back at an angle, pierced cleanly through the latissimus dorsi, ricochetted off a rib, and lodged a few inches lower down in the chest wall. Simon knew that the lung had not been touched—otherwise he would probably have been dead before that—but he was grateful for knowing the exact extent of the injury. The doctor worked with impersonal efficiency; and the girl took a cigarette and watched, passing him things when he asked for them. Simon looked at her face—it was impassive, untouched by her thoughts.
'Have another drink?' asked the doctor, when he had dressed the wound.
Simon nodded. His face was a trifle pale under his tan.
Fay Edwards poured it out, and the doctor went back to his cracked basin and washed his hands again.
'It was worth going to, that exhibition,' he said. 'I was too hot to enjoy it, but it was worth seeing. I don't know how they managed to put on some of those shows in the Streets of Paris.'
He came back and peered at the Saint through his thick lenses, which made his eyes seem smaller than they were.
