'I do that sometimes,' he said.
'And what happens next ?'
'You'll get the share you asked for,' he answered carefully. 'You can take it now, if you like.'
'And that's all.'
'Did we agree to anything else?'
She turned round; and he found that he did not want to look at her eyes.
'Are you sure you're never going to need any more help ?' she said.
He did not need to hear any more. He had known more than she could have told him, before that. He understood all the presentiment that had troubled him on the way there. For that moment he was without any common vanity, and very calm.
'I may often need it,' he said, and there was nothing but compassion in his voice. 'But I must take it where I'm lucky enough to find it. ... I know what you mean. But I never tried to make you fall in love with me. I wouldn't wish that kind of trouble on anyone.'
'I knew that,' she said, just as quietly. 'But I couldn't help wishing it.'
She came towards him, and he stood up to meet her. He knew that she was going to kiss him, and he did not try to stop her.
Her mouth was hot and hungry against his. His own lips could not be cold. That would have been hypocrisy. Perhaps because his understanding went so much deeper than the superficial smartness that any other man might have been feeling at that time, he was moved in a way that would only have been cheapened if he had tried to put word to it. He felt her lithe softness pressed against him, her arms encircling him, her hands moving over him, and did not try to hold her away.
Presently she drew back from him. Her hands were under his coat, under his arms, holding him. The expression in her eyes was curiously hopeless.
'You haven't got any gun,' she said.
He smiled faintly. He knew that her hands had been learning that even while she kissed him; and yet it made no difference,
'I didn't think I should need one,' he said.
It seemed as if she wanted to speak, and could not.
'That was your mistake,' said the harsh voice of Judd Kaskin. 'Get your hands up.'
The Saint turned, without haste. Kaskin stood just inside the door, with a heavy automatic in his hand. His florid face was savagely triumphant. Morris Dolf sidled into the room after him.
X
THEY WERE tying the Saint to a massive fake-antique wooden chair placed close to the bed. His ankles were corded to the legs, and Kaskin was knotting his wrists behind the back of it. Dolf kept him covered while it was being done, The gun in his thin hand was steady and impersonal: his weasel face and bright beady eyes held a cold-blooded sneer which made it plain that he would have welcomed an opportunity to demonstrate that he was not holding his finger off the trigger because he was afraid of the bang.
But the Saint was not watching him very intently. He was looking most of the time at Angela Lindsay. To either of the other two men his face would have seemed utterly impassive, his brow serene and amazingly unperturbed, the infinitesimal smile that lingered on his lips only adding to the enigma of his self-control. But that same inscrutable face talked to the girl as clearly as if it had used spoken words.
