'Of course not—unless he paid you a much bigger price for compensation.'
'Aren't you a beast!' she said.
The Saint sighed.
'Do we have to go into that again?'
She considered him, pouting.
'But you do really like me quite a lot, don't you ?'
'Darling, I adore you.'
'Well, I hope you do, because if you don't I'm going to scream for help and bring the whole town in. On the other hand, provided you're reasonable . . .'
The Saint put his hands in his pockets. He was patient to the point of languor, completely sure of the eventual outcome. He could afford to bide his time. These preliminaries were incidental illuminations rather than delays.
'Yes, if I'm reasonable,' he said. 'Go on. I'm interested.'
'What I mean,' she said, 'is this. You can't get away from the fact that I'm just as much entitled to these papers as you are. If it comes to that, I'm probably more entitled to them, because after all Johnny gave them to me. So if I let you see them, I don't see why we shouldn't work together. You suggested it first, anyway, and after all you do make lots of money, don't you?'
He smiled.
'I keep body and soul together. But do you really think I you'd like being shot at, and having people putting arsenic in your soup and blowing up bombs under your chair and all that sort of thing?'
'I might get used to it.'
'Even to finding snakes in your bed?'
'Oh, but I'd expect you to look after me,' she said solemnly. 'You seem to survive all right, and I expect if I was with you most of the time I'd survive, too. You've got to look after me now, anyhow. It stands to reason that if you got the papers they'll be bound to know you got them from me, and you can't just laugh lightly and walk away and leave me to be slaughtered.'
'Suppose we decide about that after we've seen what these papers are,' he suggested gently.
She seemed to sit more tightly in her chair, and her smile was very bright.
'You mean we are working together now?' The Saint left the door. He was moving over towards her, still with his hands in his pockets, threading his way with easy nonchalance through the narrow footpaths between the furniture. The glimmer of lazy humour on his lips and eyes was cool and good natured, but under it was a quiet ruthlessness that cannons could not have turned aside.
'Don't let's misunderstand each other again,' he said pleasantly. 'I came here just to see those papers. Now I'm going to look at them. There aren't any conditions attached to it. If you want a wrestling match you can have one, but you ought to know that you'll only be wasting your strength. And if you want to scream you can scream, but I don't think you'll get out more than half a beep before I knock you out. And then when you wake up you'll have a headache and a pain in your jaw, and I shall be very sorry for you, but by that time I shall have finished my reading. Does that make everything quite clear?'
Her eyes blazed at him. All her limbs were tense. She looked as if she were going to scream and risk the consequences.
The Saint didn't move. He had arrived in front of her, and there he waited. In his immobility there was a kind of cynical curiosity. It was plain that she could do what she liked: he was only interested to see what she would choose to do.
And he wasn't bluffing. His cynicism was not really unkind. He would hate
