16 The Saint Overboard

won't. I'm not so soft. You can slug me again and take me back to the Falkenberg, and we'll start again where we left off; and that's as far as you'll get.'

Simon sauntered over to the table and helped himself to a measured drink.

'Well, of course that's certainly a suggestion,' he remarked. He sat down opposite Murdoch and put up his feet along the settee. 'I've always heard that Ingerbeck's was about the ace firm in the business.'

'It is.'

'Been with them long?' asked the Saint caressingly.

'About ten years.'

'Mmm.'

Murdoch's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

'What the hell d'you mean?'

'I mean they can't be so hot if they've kept you on the over­head for ten years.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah—as we used to say in the movies. Stay where you are, Steve. If you try to start any rough stuff with me I shall hit your face so hard that you'll have to be fed from behind. Besides which, those pants will split.'

'Go on.'

Simon flicked open the cigarette-box and helped himself to a smoke. He slipped a match out of the ashstand and sprung it into flame with his thumb-nail.

'Now and for the last time,' he said, with the caress in his voice smoothed out until it was as soothing as a sheet of ice, 'will you try to understand that I don't give a good God-damn how soon you have your funeral. Your mother may miss you, and even Ingerbeck's may send a wreath; but personally I shall be as miserable as a dog with a new tree. The only reason I interfered on the Falkenberg was because Vogel wasn't half so interested in shooting you as in seeing how Loretta would like it. The only reason I pulled you out again——'

'Was what?'

'Because if you'd stayed there they'd have found out more about you. You're known. Thanks to your brilliant strategy in tearing into the Hotel de la Mer and shouting for Loretta at the top of your voice, the bloke who was sleuthing her this after­noon knows your face. And if he'd seen you to-night on an identification parade—that would have been that. For Loretta, anyway. And that's all I'm interested in. As it is, you may have been recognised already. I had to take a chance on that. I could only lug you out as quickly as possible, and hope for the best. Apart from that, you could have stayed there and been massaged with hot irons, and I shouldn't have lost any sleep. Is that plain enough or do you still think I've got a fatherly interest in your future?'

Murdoch held himself down on the berth as gingerly as if it had been red hot, and his chin jutted out as if Ms fists were itch­ing to follow it.

'I get it. But you feel like a father to Loretta—huh?'

'That's my business.'

'I'll say it is. There are plenty of greasy-haired dagoes making big money at it.'

'My dear Steve!'

'I know you, Saint,' Murdoch said raspingly. His big hands rolled his glass between them as if they were playing with the idea of crushing it to fragments with a single savage contraction, and the hard implacable lights were smouldering under the sur­face of his eyes. 'You're crook. I've heard all about you. Maybe there aren't any warrants out for you at the moment. Maybe you kid some people with that front of yours about being some kind of fairy-tale Robin Hood trying to put the world right in his own way. That stuff don't cut any ice with me. You're crook—and you're in the racket for what you can get out of it.'

Simon raised his eyebrows.

'Aren't you?'

'Yeah. I get one hundred bucks a week out of it; and the man who says I don't earn 'em is a liar. But that's the last cent I take.'

'Of course, that's very enterprising of you,' murmured the Saint, in the same drawl of gentle mockery. 'But we can't all