Prelude For War

blurted. 'What the ... Where are we going? This isn't the way to the Carlton!'

Obviously it wasn't; they were down at the Chelsea end of the Embankment, heading west.

'Have you noticed that already?' said the Saint imper­turbably. 'How observant you are, darling. Now I suppose I can't keep my secret any longer. The fact is, I'm not taking you to the Carlton.'

She caught her breath.

'You—you're not taking me to the Carlton? But I want to go to the Carlton! Take me there at once! Tell the chauffeur to turn round——'

She leaned forward and tried to hammer on the glass par­tition. Quite effortlessly the Saint pushed her back.

'Shut up,' he said calmly. 'You make me sick.'

'W-what?' she said.

She stared at him with solemn wide-open eyes as if he were some strange monster that she was seeing for the first time.

'It's no use both of us being sick,' he pointed out reason­ably. 'It would be a deafening duet.'

'I don't know what good you think this is going to do you,' she said haughtily. 'If you think you're going to protect me, or anything like that——'

'Protect you?' he said, with bland incomprehension. 'Who—me? Darling, that would never enter my head. I know you can look after yourself. But I want to take care of you for my own sake. You see, it wouldn't suit me at all if you sold those papers to Fairweather or Luker. I want them too much myself. So I just want to keep an eye on you until I get them.'

'You—you mean you're kidnapping me ?' she got out in­credulously.

But somehow she did not sound quite so indignant.

'That's the idea,' he said equably. 'And it's my duty to tell you that if you try to scream or kick up any sort of fuss I shall have to take steps to stop you. Quite gentle steps, of course. I shall just knock you cold.'

'Oh!' she said.

She was sitting up very straight, one hand on the seat be­side her, the other clutching the armrest at her side. Simon lounged at ease in his own corner, but he was watching her like a hawk and his hands were ready for instant action. He had no wish to use violence, but he would have had no com­punction about it if it became necessary. He was fighting for something bigger than stereotyped chivalry, something big­ger than the incidental hurt of any individual. He was the point of a million bayonets.

For a long moment she went on staring at him, and there was something in her face that he could not understand.

Then her muscles relaxed and she sank limply back.

'I think you're an unspeakable cad,' she said.

'I am,' said the Saint cheerfully. 'And I fairly wallow in it.'

Her mouth moved slightly, so that by the dim light of passing street lamps it almost looked for one fleeting mo­ment as though she were trying to stifle a smile. He reached over to crush his cigarette in the ash tray so as to glance at her more closely, but she moved further away from him, and the expression on her face was surly and disdainful. He lay back and stretched out his legs and appeared to go to sleep.

But he was awake and vigilant for every minute of the drive, while the car whispered out of Putney and out on to the Portsmouth Road and down the long hill into Kingston. They went on to