16 The Saint Overboard

He sat up and stared thoughtfully over the water. There was a quality of lightness in her decision that ended argument more finally than any dramatic protestations. She would go; because whatever the risk might be, it was not fact. It was her job to find out, not to guess.

'I take it you've already accepted,' he said wryly.

'The messenger was going to call back for my answer. I left a letter when I came out. I said I'd be delighted. Maybe Kurt Vogel isn't so bad as he's painted,' she said dreamily. 'He left some lovely flowers with the invitation.'

'I shouldn't be surprised if you fell for him.'

'I might.'

'But now and then your conscience would prick you. When you were riding around in your Rolls, half strangled with di­amonds, the memory of lost love would haunt you. I can see you stifling a sob, and pressing a penny into a poor beggar's hand before you hurry on, because he reminds you of me.'

'Don't say it,' she pleaded tremulously. 'I can't bear it. How was I to know you cared like that?'

The Saint scratched his head.

'I must have forgotten to tell you,' he admitted. 'Never mind.' He turned to her with cavalier blue eyes sobered to a thoughtful directness that she had seen before. 'But does it leave me out?'

'I don't know,' she said steadily. 'Have you decided to break off your holiday?'

'Let's have a drink and talk about it.'

She shook her head.

'I can't risk it. Vogel may be ashore now—he may be any­where. I've risked enough to talk to you at all. If you've changed your mind since last night, we'll fight over it.'

'Did I tell you I'd made up my mind?' Simon inquired mildly.

'You let me think you had. I took a chance when I told you the story. I wanted you to know. I still do.' She was facing him without banter now, cool and possessed and momentarily unpossessable, and yet with a shadow of wistfulness deepening in her gaze. 'I think Ingerbeck himself would have done the same. We might get a long way together; and if we came through there'd be plenty of commission to split. Just once, it might be fun for you to look at a dotted line.'

His eyebrows slanted quizzically.

'Otherwise?'

'I suppose we can still be hung out to dry.'

She stood up, dusting the sand from her robe. Simon picked himself up after her, and the grey eyes came back to his face.

'Where should we meet on this—dotted line?' he asked re­signedly.

'I'll be here to-morrow. No, not here—we can't take this risk again. Suppose I swam out and met you, off the Pointe du Moulinet. Halfway house. At eleven.' She smiled, as he had seen her smile once before. 'Are you looking for your pen?'

'I can't write, Loretta.'

'You can make a cross.'

'You know what that stands for?'

'If it does,' she said, 'you signed last night.'

He watched her walking up towards the white spires of the Casino Balneum, with all the maddening delight of movement in the swing of her brown body, and searched his vocabulary for words to describe the capriciousness of fortune. Admitted that all the gifts of that immoral goddess had strings harnessed to them—there were strings and strings. There was no real need in adventure for quite such a disturbing complication. And the Saint smiled in spite of that. The beach was empty after she had left it; that is to say, there were about a thousand other people on the Plage de l'Ecluse, but he found all of them sickeningly bovine. Including the Parisian vamp, who by this time was