Prelude For War

'It wouldn't be any good. There's always the But.'

'I'll buy it,' said the Saint patiently. 'What's the answer?'

She smiled at him rather wistfully.

'There isn't any answer. One just thinks, 'If something or other,' and then one thinks, 'But something else,' which makes it impossible,' she explained lucidly. 'As a matter of fact, I was thinking that you and I would make a mar­vellous combination.'

'And why not?'

She made a little grimace. At that moment, even more inescapably than at any other, she looked as if she was on the point of bursting into tears.

'Oh, go to hell!' she said.

Her hand slipped through his fingers and she sank back into the corner of the cab. It moved away.

Simon Templar stood and watched it until the stream of traffic swallowed it up. And then he said 'Hell and damna­tion!' with a meticulous clarity which caused the commis­sionaire to unbend in a glance of entirely misdirected sym­pathy before he resumed his thaumaturgical production of taxis.

2

After which various things happened that Simon Tem­plar would have been very edified to know about.

Mr Algernon Sidney Fairwearher was sitting in the smoke room of his paralyzingly respectable and conserva­tive club finishing an excellent cigar and enjoying a sedate post-prandial brandy and soda and the equally sedate post-­prandial conversation of an august bishop, a retired ambas­sador and a senile and slightly lecherous baronet, when he was summoned to the telephone.

'This is Valerie,' said the voice on the wire. 'I'm fright­fully sorry to bother you and all that, but I rather wanted your advice about something. Do you mind terribly? It's about Johnny.'

'What exactly do you want my advice about?' asked Mr Fairweather uncomfortably. 'That man Templar hasn't been pestering you again, I hope?'

'No—at least, not exactly,' she answered. 'I mean, he's quite easy to get on with really, and he simply throws money about, but he does ask rather a lot of questions.'

Fairweather cleared his throat.

'The man is becoming a perfect nuisance,' he said imperially. 'But I think we can deal with him soon enough. I'm glad you told me about it. I'll have a word with the commissioner of police in the morning and see that he's taken care of.'

'Oh no, you mustn't do that,' she said quickly. 'I can . take care of myself all right, and it's rather thrilling to be pestered by a famous character like the Saint. That isn't what I rang you up for. What I wanted was to ask your advice about something Johnny left with me.'

'Something Kennet left with you ?'

'Some papers he gave me to read only a week or two ago—a great thick wad of them.'

Mr Fairweather experienced the curious sensation of feeling the walls close in on him while at the same time the floor and the ceiling began to draw together. Since he was at that moment in a booth which had very little space to spare after enveloping his own ample circumference, the sensation was somewhat horrifying.

It had caught him so completely unprepared that for a few seconds he seemed to have mislaid his voice. A cold perspiration broke out on his