looking at.
He looked at the photograph again, over her shoulder. It was badly underexposed but now he could identify two of the faces. On the left, seated at a desk, with his right profile to the camera, was a man with white hair and a thin underslung jaw; and Simon knew that it was Colonel Marteau, commandant of the Sons of France. In an armchair, further back, almost facing the camera, was Luker's square granitic visage. The man on the right, who faced the desk as though being interviewed, was tall and gangling and shabbily dressed: his face looked coarse and half witted, but that might have been due to the lighting or a slight movement when the picture was taken.
Simon touched him with one finger.
'Do you know him?' he asked.
'No. I'm sure I don't. I've never seen him before.'
'You told me that Kennet was excited about a photograph. This must be it. What did he say about it?'
Her forehead was desperately wrinkled.
'I don't know ... I told you I never
'Is that all you can remember?'
'Yes. Everything,' she said despairingly. 'But doesn't it help you ? I mean, it's quite a lot for me to remember, really, and you're so clever, you ought to be able to think of something——'
The Saint might have hit her on the nose. He might have taken her neck in his two hands and wrung it out like a sponge. It stands to the credit of his self-control that he did neither of those things.
Instead he did something so free from deliberate thought that it might have been almost instinctive, and yet which afterwards he was tempted to think must have been inspired. He couldn't conscientiously pride himself on thinking so accurately and so far ahead. But he knew that that photograph must be a vital part of the secret, if not the most vital part; and he knew that the negative mattered far more than the print. Of all things, that was what he must retain until he knew its secret. And retaining it might not be so easy. Even then, as he knew, all the police departments of England were hunting him, as well as the anonymous legions of the ungodly. Accidents could always happen, and at any moment one or the other might catch up with him; and then, whichever it was, the first thing that would follow would be that he would be searched. Luckily a Leica negative was not so hard to hide. . . .
That was how he might have worked it out if he had thought so long. But he didn't. He simply got up and strolled over to the dressing table with the negative held between his fingers. There, standing with his back to the girl, he took out his fountain pen, removed the cap, unscrewed the nib end and carefully drew it out with the rubber ink sac attached. Then he rolled the negative gently with his finger and thumb, slid it down into the barrel of the pen and replaced everything. It was not so good as the strong room of a safe deposit, where he would have liked to put it, but it was the best thing he could improvise at the moment; and the restrained mechanical occupation of his hands helped to liberate his struggling thoughts. . . .
'What are you doing?' the girl asked fretfully.
'Thinking.' He turned round empty handed, the pen back in his pocket. She had seen nothing. 'This seems like a good time and place for it.' Again his eyes were narrowed on her like keen blades of sapphire probing for the first hint of deception. 'And talking of places—what made you pick on this one to come to?'
'Oh, that was something else that I thought was pretty clever of me. I mean, if you hadn't been following me, which was sort of cheating, you'd never have thought of looking for me here, would you ? And it all came to me in a flash, just like
