'You amaze me,' said the Saint solemnly. 'But does it matter whether Comrade Fairweather approves or not?'
'Well,' she said, 'a girl has to struggle along somehow, and Comrade Fairweather is a great help. I mean, if he has a man coming to dinner, for instance, and he doesn't want him to concentrate too hard on business, he asks me along and pays me for it. And then I probably have to have a new dress as well, because of course you can't stop a businessman concentrating in an old piece of sackcloth, and I never seem to have any new clothes when I need them.'
'In other words, you're his tame vamp, I take it.'
She opened her eyes wide at him.
'Do you think I'm tame?'
The Saint surveyed her appraisingly. Again he experienced the bafflement of trying to probe beyond that pert childish beauty.
'Maybe not so tame,' he corrected himself. 'And what would your fee be for dining with a gent if it meant earning Comrade Fairweather's disapproval? For instance, what about having dinner with me on Thursday?'
She didn't answer for a moment. She sat looking downwards, swinging her leg idly, apparently absorbed in the movement of her foot.
Then she looked up at him and smiled.
'You've fallen for me in quite a big way, haven't you?' she said a little ironically. 'I mean, inviting me to dinner and offering to pay me for it.'
'I fell passionately in love with you the moment I saw you,' Simon declared shamelessly.
She nodded.
'I know. I couldn't help noticing the eager way you dashed off this morning when you thought you'd got all the information you could out of me. I mean, it was all too terribly romantic for anything.'
'The audience made me bashful,' said the Saint. 'Now if we'd only been alone——'
Her dark eyes were mocking.
'Well,' she said, 'I don't mean that I couldn't put up with having dinner with you if you paid me for it. After all, I've got to have dinner somewhere, and I've been out with a lot of people who weren't nearly so good looking as you are even if they weren't nearly so bashful either. Algy used to pay me twenty guineas for entertaining his important clients.'
'That must have helped to make things bearable,' said the Saint in some awe.
'Of course,' she went on innocently, 'I should expect you to pay a bit more than that, because after all I'm only a defenceless girl, and I know you must have some horrible motive for wanting me to have dinner with you.'
Simon raised his eyebrows.
'You shock me,' he said. 'What horrible motive could I have for asking you out to dinner? I promise that you'll be as safe with me as you would be with your old Aunt Agatha.'
She sighed.
'I know. That's just what I mean. If your eyes were foaming with unholy desire, or anything like that, I probably shouldn't charge you anything at all. After all, brief life is here our portion, and all that sort of thing, and a spot of unholy desire from the right sort of person and in the right sort of way—well, you see what I mean, don't you ? But as things are, I don't think I could possibly let you off with less than fifty guineas.'
Simon leaned towards her.
