15 The Saint in New York

promised him I would never tell his name to anyone, or tell anyone how to get in touch with him.'

The Saint took a cigarette. His hand was steady, but the steadiness was achieved consciously.

'You mean that if you found him, and I met you in such a way that I accidentally saw him and jumped to the conclusion that he was the man I wanted—your conscience would be clear.'

'Why not?' she asked naively. 'If that's what you want, I'll do it'

A slight shiver went through the Saint—he did not know whether the night had turned colder, or whether it was a sud­den, terrible understanding of what lay behind that flash of almost childish innocence.

'You're very kind,' he said.

She did not reply at once.

'After that,' she said at length, 'will you have finished?'

'That will be about the end.'

She threw her cigarette away and sat still for a moment, con­templating the darkness beyond the range of their lights. Her profile had the aloof, impossible perfection of an artist's ideal.

'I heard about you as soon as you arrived,' she said. 'I was hoping to see you. When I had seen you, nothing else mat­tered. Nothing else ever will. When you've waited all your life for something, you recognize it when it comes.'

It was the nearest thing to a testament of herself that he ever heard, and for the rest of his days it was as clear in his mind as it was a moment after she said it. The mere words were unimpassioned, almost commonplace; but in the light of what little he knew of her, and the time and place at which they were said, they remained as an eternal question. He never knew the answer.

He could not tell her that he was not free for her, that even in the lawless workings of his own mind she was for ever apart and unapproachable although to every sense infinitely desir­able. She would not have understood. She was not even waiting for a response.

She had started the car again; and as they ran southwards through the park she was talking as if nothing personal had ever arisen between them, as if only the ruthless details of his mission had ever brought them together, without a change in the calm detachment of her voice.

'The Big Fellow would have liked to keep you. He admired the way you did things. The last time I saw him, he told me he wished he could have got you to join him. But the others would never have stood for it. He told me to try and make things easy for you if they caught you—he sort of hoped that he might have a chance to get you in with him some day.'

She stopped the car again on Lexington Avenue, at the cor­ner of 50th Street.

'Where do we meet?' she asked.

He thought for a moment. The Waldorf Astoria was still his secret stronghold, and he had a lurking unwillingness to give it away. He had no other base.

'How long will you be?' he temporized.

'I ought to have some news for you in an hour and a half or two hours.'

An idea struck him from a fleeting, inconsequential gleam of memory that went back to the last meal he had enjoyed in peace, when he had walked down Lexington Avenue with a gay defiance in the tilt of his hat and the whole adventure be­fore him.

'Call Chris Cellini, on East 45th Street,' he said. 'I probably shan't be there, but I can leave a message or pick one up. Any­thing you say will be safe with him.'

'Okay.' She put a hand on his shoulder, turning a little to­wards him. 'Presently we shall have more time—Simon.'

Her face was lifted towards him, and again the fragrant per­fume of her was in his nostrils; the amazing amber eyes were darkened, the red lips parted, without coquetry, in acquies­cence and acknowledgment. He kissed her, and there was a fire in his blood and a delicious languor in his limbs. It was impos­sible to remember anything else about her, to think of any­thing else. He did not want to remember, to strive or plot or aspire; in the surrender to her physical bewitchment there was an ultimate rest, an infinity of sensuous peace, beyond any­thing he had ever dreamed of.