'You swine!' she whispered.
'I'm sorry,' he said cynically.
'What have you got to talk about, anyway? I mean, you think Johnny was murdered. Well, why should you care? You've killed dozens of people yourself, haven't you?'
'Only people who really needed it. You know, there are some people who are vastly improved by death.'
'If somebody murdered Johnny, perhaps they thought he needed it,' she said. 'I daresay the people you killed were pretty poisonous one way or another, but then who isn't? I mean, look at me, for instance. Supposing somebody murdered me. I suppose you'd think that was a damned good job.'
'I should think it was a great pity,' he said with surprising gentleness. 'You see, you poor little idiot, I happen to like you.'
'Isn't that thrilling?' she said; and then she suddenly put her face in her hands.
The Saint lighted a cigarette and watched her. She sat quite still, without sobbing. He knew that this was what he had been working for, the success of his relentless drive to break her down; and yet he felt sorry for her. An impulse of tenderness moved him that it was not easy to fight down. But he knew that on this moment might hang things too momentous to be thought about. His brain had to be cold, accurate, making no mistakes, even if he wanted to be kind.
'All right,' she said huskily. 'Damn you.'
She put her hands down abruptly and looked at him, dry-eyed.
'But what's the use?' she said. 'It's done now, isn't it? I did it. Well, that's all about it. If I were the right sort of girl I suppose I'd go and jump in the river, but I'm not the right sort of girl.'
'That wouldn't help anybody very much.' His voice was quiet now, understanding, not taunting. 'It's done, but we can still do things about it. You can help me. We can go on with what Johnny was doing. But we've got to find out what it was all about. You've got to think. You've got to think back—think very hard. Try to remember what Johnny told you about Luker and Fairweather and Sangore. Try to remember what he'd got that was going to upset them all. You must remember something.'
He tried to hammer his words into her brain with all the urgency that was in him, to awaken her with the warmth of his own intense sincerity. She must tell him now if she was to help him at all.
Her eyes stayed on him and her hands opened and closed again.
She shook her head.
'I don't,' she replied. 'Really. But ...'
She stopped, frowning. He held his breath.
'But what?' he prompted.
'Nothing,' she said.
Simon turned the ash from his cigarette on to the edge of a plate with infinite restraint. The reaction had emptied him so that he had to make the movement with a deliberate effort.
A waiter bustled up to the table and asked if they wanted coffee.
Simon felt as if a fire in him had been put out. He felt as if he had been led blindfold to the top of a mountain and then turned back and sent down again without being given a glimpse of the view. While he mechanically gave the order he wondered, in an insanely cold-blooded sort of way, what would happen if he stood up and shot the waiter through the middle of his crisp, complacent shirt front. Probably it had
