16 The Saint Overboard

you think he's turned Horatio Alger because you gave him a pretty smile you're crazy.' '

'Were you listening?'

He shook his head.

'I'm a thought-reader. Besides, I did try to kidnap him, after a fashion. Anyway I tried to detain him. Obviously. He may be the hell of a good detective in some ways, but he doesn't fit into the game we're playing here. He'd done his best to break it up twice in one day, and I thought it'd be a good thing to keep him quiet for a bit. I still do.'

'And the rest?' she said.

'What do you think?'

Her hand slipped down over his hair, came to rest on his shoulder. For once the dark mischievous eyes were quiet with a kind of surrendered sadness.

'I think Steve was right.'

'And yet you're here.'

'Yes. I'm a fool, aren't I? But I didn't tell you I was weak-minded. All Ingerbeck's people have to go through an intelligence test, and they tell me I've got the mentality of a child of five. They say I'll probably finish up in an asylum in another year or two.'

'May I come and see you in the padded cell?'

'If you want to. But you won't. When you've had all you want from me——'

He silenced her with his lips. And with her mouth he tried to silence the disbelief in his own mind that sat back and asked cold questions. There was a hunger in him, overriding reason, that turned against the weary emptiness of disbelief.

He was a man, and human. He kissed her, touched her, held her face in his hands, and found forgetfulness in the soft sweet­ness of her body. He was aware of her with every sense; and of his own desire. There was no other answer he could give. He should have been thinking of so many other things; but he had stopped thinking. He was tired—not with the painful fatigue of ordinary exhaustion, but with the peace of a man who has come home from a long journey.

Presently he lay back with his head in her lap, looking up at the stars.

'Tell me something,' she said.

'I'm happy.'

'So am I. I've no reason to be, but I am. It doesn't seem to matter. You do love me, don't you?'

He was in a dream from which he didn't want to wake. Some­where in his memory there was the cynical impress of a thought he had had so long ago, that if the need came she would use her fascination to tempt him as she had hoped to tempt Vogel. And there was his own thought that if that was her strategy he would meet her cheerfully with her own weapons. But that was so faint and far away. Must he be always thinking, suspecting, fighting— when there was so much comfort in the present?

He said: 'Yes.'

'Say it all.'

'I love you.'

'Dear liar . . .'

She leaned over him. Her hair fell on his face. She kissed him.

'I don't care.' she said. 'To-morrow I shall be wise—and sorry. You're going to hurt me, Saint. And I don't seem to mind. I'm happy. I've had to-night.'

'Is there any to-morrow ?'

She nodded.

'We must go in,' she said.

Again they walked under the glittering sky, hand in hand, towards reality. There was so much that should have been said, so little that they could say. This was illusion, yet it was more real than life.

'What's your to-morrow?' he asked.