Prelude For War

Fairweather. Of course you know.'

'Of course,' said the Saint humbly. 'And didn't Kennet appreciate it?'

'No. That's what made me so furious. When we got here he told me he was glad they wanted to see him, because he wanted to see them, too, and instead of them giving him a job he was going to see that theirs were made so uncomfortable that they'd be glad to give them up. So I told him I thought he was a silly, stupid, narrow-minded, bigoted halfwit, and a crashing bore as well, and—and we parted. After dinner he went into the library to talk to them, and I went to the movies with Don Knightley, and I never saw John again.' She gazed at the Saint appeal­ingly. 'D-do you really think it was my fault that all this happened?'

He considered her without smiling.

'I think you deserve a damned good hiding for leading Kennet up the garden,' he said dispassionately. 'And if I were Windlay I'd see that you got one.'

She pouted. She seemed to be more disappointed that he could think of her like that than seriously annoyed by what he had said. And then, quite unanswerably, a gleeful little twinkle came into her eyes that made her look momen­tarily like a mischievous and very attractive child.

'You wouldn't say that if you knew Windlay,' she gig­gled. 'He's a very pale and skinny young man with glasses.'

Simon gave up the struggle. Actually he felt a colder anger against the men who had used the girl as their tool. The possibility that she might have been something more than an unsuspecting instrument was one which he dis­carded almost at once. She had already told him far too much. And her mind, whatever its obvious failings, could never have worked that way.

'Where did Kennet and Windlay live?' he asked flatly.

'Oh, miles from anywhere, out in Notting Hill, in an awful place called Balaclava Mansions.'

'Notting Hill isn't miles from anywhere,' said the Saint. 'The trouble with you is that you've never heard of any place outside the West End. You've got a brain; why don't you get reckless and try using it?'

She sighed.

'My God,' she said. 'Now you're going to come over all earnest on me. You think I ought to have a good hiding for the way I treated Johnny. I suppose my intentions weren't serious enough. I oughtn't to have pretended some­thing I didn't mean. Is that it?'

'More or less,' he said bluntly.

He wondered what excuse she was going to make for herself.

She didn't make any excuse. She laughed.

'You have the nerve to stand there, in your beautiful clothes, with your dark hair and dashing blue eyes, and tell me that,' she said startlingly. 'I bet you've made love to heaps of women yourself, hundreds of times, and never meant a word of it.'

The Saint stared at her. For a moment he was com­pletely and irrevocably taken aback.

In that moment his first hasty estimate of her underwent a surprising reversal, although it made no difference to his belief in her innocence. But it gave him an insight into her mind which he had not been expecting. She might be feather­brained and spoiled, but she had something more in her head than he had credited her with. For the first time he found himself appreciating her.

'You win, darling,' he said. The turn of his lips became impish. 'Only I always mean it a little.'