'Wot is this?' he demanded. 'A game of ?'d and seek?'
'You have no idea,' said the Saint.
The apartment he was heading for was on the north side of Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park. It was only one of many addresses that he had had at various times, to several of which he still owned the keys; but it was the one which had been prepared for his return, and he had no intention of being prevented from going there. The only question was how the shadowing party was to be shaken off.
As they ran up St. James's Street he looked at the meter and counted off the necessary change to pay the fare with a substantial tip. When the next traffic light reddened against them he stretched a long arm through the window and thrust the money into the driver's hand.
'I shall be leaving you any minute now, Al-phonse,' he said. 'But don't let that stop you. Keep right on your way, and don't look back till you get to Hyde Park Corner. And have a bob on J Samovar for the Derby.'
He had the door on the latch as they passed the Ritz, and his steel-blue eyes were watching the traffic intently. Three buses were taking on pas-sengers at the stop just west of the hotel, and as they went past the leader was edging out into the stream. Simon looked back and saw it cut out close behind him, baulking the following taxi; and that was his chance. In a flash he was out of his cab, dropping nimbly to the road, and the red side of the bus thundered by a couple of inches from his shoulder. It hid him perfectly from whoever was trailing him in the other cab, which was trying to pass the obstruction and catch up again; and he stood on the sidewalk and watched the whole futile procession trundling away westwards with a relentless zeal which brought an irresponsible twinkle of sheer urchin mischief into his eyes.
A few minutes later he was sauntering into his apartment building and nodding cheerily to the janitor.
'Anybody called while I've been away, Sam?' he asked, as if he had only been away for a weekend.
Sam Outrell's beam of delight gave way to a troubled gravity. He looked furtively about him.
'There was two detectives here the other day, sir,' he said.
The Saint frowned at him thoughtfully for a moment. Although Sam Outrell was nominally employed by the management of the building, he was on Simon Templar's private payroll as well; but no stipend could have bought the look of almost doglike devotion with which he waited anxiously for the Saint's reaction. Simon looked up at him again and smiled.
'I expect they were the birds I hired to try and find a collar stud that went down the waste pipe,' he said and went whistling on his way to the lift.
He let himself into his apartment noiselessly. There were sounds of someone moving about ir the living room, and he only stopped to throw his hat and coat onto a chair before he went through and opened the second door.
'Hullo, Pat,' he said softly. 'I thought you'd be here.'
Across the room, a tall slender girl with fair golden hair gazed at him with eyes as blue as his own. There was the grace of a pagan goddess in the way she stood, caught in surprise as she was by the sound of his voice, and the reward of all journeys in the quiver of her red lips.
'So you have come back,' she said.
'After many adventures,' said the Saint and took her into his arms.
She turned away presently, keeping his arm round her, and showed him the table.
'I got in a bottle of your favourite sherry,' she said rather breathlessly, 'in case you came.'
'In case?' said the Saint.
'Well, after you wired me not to meet you at Southampton------'
He laughed, a quiet lilt of laughter that had rung in her memory for many weeks.
'Darling, that was because I was expecting an-other deputation of welcome at the same time, and it might have spoilt the fun for both of us. The deputation was there, too--but you shall hear about that presently.'
He filled the two glasses which stood beside the bottle and carried one of them over to an arm-chair. Over the rim of his glass he regarded her, freshening the portrait which he had carried with him ever since he went away. So much had happened to him, so many things had touched him and passed on into the illimitable emptiness of time, but not one line of her had changed. She was the same as she had been on the day when he first met her, the same as she had been through all the lawless adventures that they had shared since she threw in her lot irrevocably with his. She looked at him in the same way.
'You're older,' she said quietly.
He smiled.
'I haven't been on a picnic.'
'And there's something about you that tells me you aren't on a picnic even now.'
He sipped the golden nectar from his glass and delved for a cigarette. When she said that he was older she could not have pointed to a grey hair or a new line on his face to prove her statement. And at that moment she felt that the clock might well have been put back five years. The fine sunburnt devil-may-care face, the face of a born outlaw, was in some subtle way more keenly etched than ever by the indefinable inward light that came to it when trouble loomed up in his buccaneering path. She knew him so well that the lazy quirk of the unscrupulous freebooter's mouth told a story of its own, and even the whimsical smile that lurked on in his eyes could not deceive her.
'It isn't my fault if you develop these psychic powers, old sweetheart,' he said.
'It's your fault if you can't even stay out of trouble for a week now and again,' she said and sat on the arm of his chair.
He shook his head and took one of her hands.
'I tried to, Pat, but it just wasn't meant to happen. A wicked ogre with a black guardee moustache hopped
