Prelude For War

The Saint smote them both on the back together.

'You two beauties,' he said rapturously. 'Why did the goblins ever let you go?'

He picked up the nearest hand, slapped money into it and started back for the Daimler at a run. For the first time since the beginning of that long feverish ordeal he felt that there was music in his soul again. Even the Daimler seemed to throw off its sedateness and fly like a bird over the short winding road that led from Anford Station into the town.

In its way, the Golden Fleece was such an obvious desti­nation that he had not even considered it. And now again he wondered what was in Lady Valerie's mind.

But wondering was only a pastime when he was within reach of knowledge. He parked the Daimler around the next turning beyond the hotel, where it would not be too obviously in view, and walked back. At that lifeless hour before the English inn is permitted by law to recommence its function for the evening, the lobby and lounge of the hotel were empty. There was not even any sign of tenancy at the office. He moved quietly over to the desk and looked at the register. The last signature on the page said 'Valerie Woodchester' in a big round scrawl. In the column beside it had been entered a room number: 6.

Simon flitted up the stairs. There was no one to question him. He moved along the upper corridor in effortless silence until he came to a door on which was painted the figure 6. When he saw it it was like Parsifal coming to the end of his journey. He stood for several seconds outside, not mov­ing, not even breathing, simply listening with ears keyed to hypernormal receptiveness. The only sounds they could catch were occasional almost inaudible rustlings beyond the door. He took a quick catlike step forward, grasped the handle and turned it smoothly, and went into the room.

Lady Valerie looked up at him from a couch on the far side of the room with her face blurring into a blank oval of dumbfounded amazement.

Simon locked the door and stood with his back to it.

'Darling,' he said reproachfully, but with the lilt of rapture still playing havoc with the evenness of his voice, 'what was the matter with our hospitality?'

2

The room was one of those quainte dormitoryes which have always made the English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was principally furnished with a gigantic imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation mahogany dressing table with a tilting mirror; a black-enamelled iron bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a marble-topped washstand bearing a china basin with a china jug standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horti­cultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reason­able care, just manage to find a path between them without having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in which Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had unsuccessfully tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that she had been perusing when the Saint came in.

Simon's satiric eye rested on the ends of documents that still protruded.

'If you'd told us you wanted something to read,' he said, 'we could have lent you some good books.'

He leaned against the door, clothed in magnificent assur­ance, as if he had been conversationally breaking the ice with an old friend from whom he was sure to receive a cor­dial welcome.

He got it. The stunned astonishment dissolved out of her face and a broad schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.

'Well, I'm damned!' she said. 'Aren't you marvellous? How