Prelude For War

erie's face was very dirty and her hair was in wild disarray; she also had a headache, and she was in a poisonous temper.

'Oh, stop it!' she burst out jitteringly. 'You've got me into a hell of a nice mess, haven't you ? I suppose you enjoy this sort of thing, but I don't. Aren't you going to do something about it?'

'What would you like me to do?' he asked accommo­datingly.

'What are they going to do with us ?'

He shrugged.

'I'm not a thought reader. But you can use your imagi­nation.'

She brooded. Her lower lip was thrust out, her pencilled eyebrows drawn together in a vicious' scowl.

'The damned swine,' she said. 'I'd like to see them all die the most horrible deaths. I'd like to see them being burnt alive or something, and jeer at them. . . . My God, I wish I had a cigarette. . . . Doesn't it seem ages since we were having dinner at the Berkeley? Simon, do you think they're really going to kill us ?'

'I expect their ideas are running more or less along those lines,' he admitted. 'But they haven't done it yet. What 'll you bet me we aren't dining at the Berkeley again to­morrow ?'

'It's all very well for you to talk like that,' she said. 'It's your job. But I'm scared.' She shivered. Her voice rose a trifle. 'It's horrible! I don't want to die! I—I want to have a good time, and wear nice clothes, and—and . . . Oh, what's the good ?' She stared at him sullenly in the dimming light. 'I suppose you think that's frightful of me. If your girl friend was in my place I expect she'd think this was an awfully jolly party. I suppose she simply revels in being rolled over in cars, and knocked on the head, and mauled about and tied up and waiting to be killed, and all the rest of it. Well, all I can say is, I wish she was here instead of me.'

The Saint chuckled. He was not particularly amused, but he didn't want her nerve to crack completely, and he knew that her breaking point was not very far away. 'After all, you chose me for a husband, darling. I tried to discourage you, but you seemed to have made up your mind that you liked the life. Never mind. I'm pretty good at getting out of jams.'

'Even if we do get out, I expect my hair will be snow white or something,' she said miserably.

She blinked. Her eyes were very large and solemn; she looked very childish and pathetic. A pair of big bright tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

'I ... I do hate this so much,' she whispered. 'And I'm so uncomfortable.'

'All the same, you mustn't cry,' he said. 'The floor's damp enough already.'

'It couldn't be any damper. So why shouldn't I cry? I can think of dozens of things I'd like to do, and crying's the only one of them I can do. So why shouldn't I ?'

'Because it makes you look like an old hag.'

She sniffed.

'Well, that's your fault,' she said; but she stopped cry­ing. She twisted her head down and hunched up one shoul­der and wriggled comically, trying to dry the tears on her blouse. She drew a long shuddering sigh like a baby. She said: 'All right, why don't you talk to me about something and take my mind off it ? What were you getting so excited about when the car turned over?'

The Saint gazed past her, into one of the corners where the dusk was rapidly deepening. That memory had been the first to return to his mind when he painfully recovered consciousness, had haunted him ever since under the surface of his unconcern, embittering the knowledge of his own helplessness.