16 The Saint Overboard

seven, and I thought I had half an hour to wait.'

He opened a packet of cigarettes while Roger teetered back to his party with the four glasses of sherry adroitly distributed between his fingers, and soon afterwards asked for a lavatory. He went out, leaving a freshly ordered glass of beer untouched on the bar; and the man who had taken the place next to him, who had been specifically warned against the dangers of letting his attentions become too conspicuous stood and gazed at that reas­suring item of still life for a considerable time before being trou­bled with the first doubts of bis own wisdom. And long before those qualms became really pressing, the Saint was reclining gracefully on Roger Conway's bed, blowing smoke-rings at the ceiling and waiting for the others to keep the appointment.

They came punctually at seven; and, having closed and locked the door, eyed him solemnly.

'He looks debauched,' Peter said at length.

'And sickly,' agreed Roger.

'Too many hectic moments with the heroine,' theorised Peter.

'Do you think,' suggested Roger, 'that if we both jumped on him together——'

They jumped, and there was a brief but hilarious tussle. At the end of which:

'Do your nurses know you're out?' Simon demanded sternly. 'And who told you two clowns to start chasing innocent girls to their doom before you've hardly unpacked? Presently I shall want you in a hurry for some real work, and you'll be prancing over the hillsides, picking daisies and sticking primroses in your hair—— Did you speak, Peter?'

'How the hell could he speak,' gasped Roger, 'while you're grinding your knee into his neck? You big bully . . . Ouch! That's my arm you're breaking.'

The Saint picked himself off their panting bodies, sorted the smouldering remains of his cigarette out of the bedclothes, and lighted another.

'You're out of training,' he remarked. 'I can see that I've only just thought of you in time to save you from being put in a vase.'

'I don't know whether we want to be thought of,' said Peter, massaging his torso tenderly. 'You always get so physical when you're thinking.'

'It only means he's got into another mess and wants us to get him out of it,' said Roger. 'Or have you found a million pounds and are you looking for some deserving orphans?'

Simon grinned at them affectionately, and threw himself into a chair.

'Well, as a matter of fact there may be several millions in it,' he answered.

There was a quiet dominance in his voice which carried them back to other times in their lives when the fun and horseplay had been just as easily set aside for the other things that had bound them together; and they sorted themselves out just as soberly and sat down, Roger on the bed and Peter in the other chair.

'Tell us,' said Roger.

Simon told them.

2

'So that's the story. Now . . .'

He sat up and looked at them through a haze of smoke, in one of those supreme pauses when he knew most clearly that he would not, could not, have changed his life for any other. It was like old times. It was like coming home. It was the freebooter coming back to the outlaw camp-fire where he belonged. He saw their faces across the room, Peter's rugged young-pugilist vital­ity, Roger's lean and rather grim intentness; and under the tur­bulent thoughts that were clouding the background of his mind he knew an enduring and inexplicable contentment.

'As I see it, if all the evidence that's been collected since Ingerbeck's took on the case was worked up, there might be enough of it to put Vogel away. But that's not good enough for the underwriters, and it isn't good enough for Ingerbeck's. The underwriters can't show any dividends on gloating over Vogel sitting in prison for a few years. They want to recover some of the money they've lost on claims since he went into business. And Ingerbeck's want their commission on the same. And we want——'

'Both,' said Peter Quentin bluntly.