Prelude for War (15 page)

Patricia was waiting for
him when he stopped the car
on Peter’s drive. He
picked her up and kissed her.

“You look good enough
to eat,” he said. “And that
reminds me, I
haven’t had any lunch. Where are the
troops?”

“Peter’s keeping an
eye on your menagerie,” she told
him. “I came
back and sent Hoppy over to keep him com
pany.
They’re all at the Golden Fleece, and when Peter
last
phoned Hoppy was just starting on his second bottle of whiskey. Did you find
Windlay?”

“I found him,”
said the Saint stonily. “But not soon
enough.”

In the kitchen, over a
plate of cold beef and a tankard
of ale, he told her the
story in curt dispassionate sentences
that brought it all
into her mind as vividly as though she had been there herself.

“It only means that
we were right, darling,” he con
cluded. “Kennet
had something that was big enough to
commit murder for.
There wasn’t any accidental-death
hokum about Windlay.
Somebody knocked on the door and gave him the works the minute he opened it.
And the whole
flat was torn into small pieces. It
must have gone on while we were all footling about at that inquest acquiring
beautiful alibis—these ungodly are professionals!”

“But did they find
what they were looking for?”

“I wish I knew. Bur
there’s a hell of a good chance that
they didn’t, since
they made a mess like that. I wish I knew
exactly
what the prize was. It seems to me that it must
have
been a fair-sized dossier—something that wouldn’t
be
too easy to hide. And unless Kennet was a certifiable
lunatic
he wouldn’t have brought that to Whiteways with
out
leaving a duplicate somewhere. Hence the battle of
Balaclava
Mansions.” He pushed his plate away and
scowled
at it. “If only that damned girl could remember
a
bit more of the things Kennet told her! He must have
spouted
like a fountain, and she simply didn’t listen.”

“Why don’t you see
her again?” suggested Patricia.
“You might be
able to jog her memory or something. Any
way,
you’d have a good time trying.”

Simon looked up at her
from under impenitently slant
ing brows.

“Are you insinuating
that a man of my unparalleled
purity——
”

“You’ll have to hurry
if you want to catch her today,” Patricia said practically. “Peter
found out from one of the
chauffeurs that they’re
starting back to London at five-thirty.”

The Saint stood up
restlessly.

“I think I’d better
amble over,” he said.

Again the Hirondel roared
over the Anford road, and
a few minutes later it
swung to a grinding stop in the small
courtyard in front
of the Golden Fleece. As Simon stopped
the engine and hitched
his long legs over the side he glanced
around
for a glimpse of his confederates. The maternal
laws of England being what they were, Hoppy must have
been torn away from his second bottle about three
hours
ago, and it would be another
half-hour before he would be
allowed
to return to it. Simon scanned the landscape for
some likely place where the thirsty vigil might have been
spent, and he became totteringly transfixed as his
eyes settled on the window of an establishment on the opposite side o
f the road, next to the Assembly Rooms, over which
ran
the legend;
Ye Village Goodie
Shoppe.

Peter Quentin was stoically
reading a magazine; but on
the other side of the table,
bulging over the top of a choco
late eclair, the froglike
eyes of Mr Uniatz ogled Simon
through the plate glass
with an indescribable expression
of anguish and reproach
that made the Saint turn hastily
into the hotel entrance
with his bones melting with helpless
laughter.

The first person he saw
was Valerie Woodchester her
self. She was sitting
alone on the arm of a chair in the
lounge, smoking a
cigarette and swinging one shapely leg
disconsolately,
but at the sight of him her face brightened.

“Oh, hullo,” she
said. “What’s the matter?”

“Some things are too
holy to talk about,” said the Saint, sinking on to the chair opposite.
“Never mind. Perhaps you
can bring me back to
earth. Are you always being left
alone?”

“The others are
upstairs having a business conference
or something.”
She studied him with fresh and candid inter
est.
“Where have you been all the afternoon? You simply
seemed to vanish off the face of the globe. I was afraid
I should have to go back to town without seeing you again.”

“Then why go back to
town?” he asked. “You could
come over and join
us at Peter Quentin’s. There’s a spare
bed
and a dart board and plenty to drink, and we could see lots more of each
other.”

For a moment she looked a
little hesitant. Then she
shook her head quite
decidedly.

“I couldn’t do that.
After all, two’s company and all that
sort of thing, you
know, and anyhow I don’t think it would
be
good for you to see much more of me than you did when
we
first met.” A little smile touched her lips and gleamed
in her dark eyes. “Besides, I’m quite sure Algy Fairweather
wouldn’t like it. He’s been warning me against you. For
some reason or other he doesn’t seem to approve of you
an awful lot.”

“You amaze me,”
said the Saint solemnly. “But does it
matter
whether Comrade Fairweather approves or not?”

“Well,” she said,
“a girl has to struggle along somehow,
and
Comrade Fairweather is a great help. I mean, if he
has
a man coming to dinner, for instance, and he doesn’t
want
him to concentrate too hard on business, he asks me
along
and pays me for it. And then I probably have to
have
a new dress as well, because of course you can’t stop a businessman
concentrating in an old piece of sackcloth,
and
I never seem to have any new clothes when I need
them.”

“In other words,
you’re his tame vamp, I take it.”

She opened her eyes wide at him.

“Do you think I’m
tame?”

The Saint surveyed her
appraisingly. Again he experi
enced the bafflement of
trying to probe beyond that pert
childish beauty.

“Maybe not so tame,” he corrected
himself. “And what
would your fee be
for dining with a gent if it meant earning
Comrade Fairweather’s disapproval? For instance, what
about having dinner with me on Thursday?”

She didn’t answer for a moment. She sat looking
down
wards, swinging her leg idly,
apparently absorbed in the
movement of
her foot.

Then she looked up at him
and smiled.

“You’ve fallen for me
in quite a big way, haven’t you?”
she
said a little ironically. “I mean, inviting me to dinner
and offering to pay me for it.”

“I fell passionately
in love with you the moment I saw
you,” Simon
declared shamelessly.

She nodded.

“I know. I couldn’t
help noticing the eager way you
dashed off this morning when you thought you’d
got all the
information you could out of me.
I mean, it was all too
terribly
romantic for anything.”

“The audience made me
bashful,” said the Saint. “Now
if
we’d only been alone——
”

Her dark eyes were mocking.

“Well,” she said,
“I don’t mean that I couldn’t put up with having dinner with you if you
paid me for it. After
all, I’ve got to have
dinner somewhere, and I’ve been out
with a lot of people
who weren’t nearly so good looking as you are even if they weren’t nearly so
bashful either.
Algy used to pay me twenty guineas for
entertaining his
important clients.”

“That must have
helped to make things bearable,” said
the
Saint in some awe.

“Of course,” she
went on innocently, “I should expect you to pay a bit more than that,
because after all I’m only
a defenceless girl, and I
know you must have some horrible
motive for wanting me to
have dinner with you.”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“You shock me,”
he said. “What horrible motive could
I
have for asking you out to dinner? I promise that you’ll
be as safe with me as you would be with your old Aunt
Agatha.”

She sighed.

“I know. That’s just
what I mean. If your eyes were
foaming with unholy desire,
or anything like that, I prob
ably shouldn’t charge you
anything at all. After all, brief
life is here our
portion, and all that sort of thing, and a
spot
of unholy desire from the right sort of person and in
the
right sort of way—well, you see what I mean, don’t
you
? But as things are, I don’t think I could possibly let you
off with less than fifty guineas.”

Simon leaned towards her.

“You know,” he
said earnestly, “there’s something about you—an innocence, a freshness, a
sort of girlish appeal that
attracts me irresistibly.
You’re so—so ingenuous and uncalculating
.
Will a check do, or shall you want it in cash?”

“Damn,” she said
in dismay. “I believe you’d have paid
a
hundred if I’d asked for it. Oh well, I suppose a bargain’s
a bargain. A check will do.”

The Saint grinned.

“Thursday, then, at
eight o’clock. At the Berkeley. And
since this is a
business deal I shall expect you to be punctual.
The
fee will go down one guinea for every minute I’m kept waiting.”

She tossed the stub of her
cigarette across the room into
the empty fireplace.

“Well, now we’ve finished talking about
business can’t we
enjoy ourselves? I was
hoping we’d have a chance after the
inquest,
but Algy hustled me away before I could even look
round. They were all as mad as hornets, and I can’t
blame
them. After all, you did make
rather an ass of yourself,
didn’t
you?”

“Do you really think I
was just playing the fool?” he
asked curiously.

“I mean trying to make
out that Johnny had been mur
dered and Algy set fire to
the house and so on. I mean,
it was all so ridiculous,
wasn’t it?”

This time he knew beyond
doubt that her artlessness was not so na
ï
ve
as it seemed. Her chatter was just a little too
quick;
besides, he had seen her face at one stage of the
inquest.

He paused to consider his
reply for a moment. If she
knew what he had seen in
London, it might startle some
thing out of her. He felt
that the move must be made with a fine hand.

He had no chance to make it
in that way.

There was a sound of
footsteps descending stairs, reach
ing the entrance of
the lounge. Simon glanced over his shoulder; and then he rose leisurely to his
feet.

“It’s time you were
getting ready, my dear——
”

Fairweather’s thinly jovial
voice broke off sharply as he
realized that there was
someone else in the room. He stared
at the Saint for a
long moment, with his mouth slightly
open, while his fat
face turned into the likeness of a piece
of
lard. And then, without any acknowledgment of recog
nition,
he turned deliberately back to Lady Valerie.

“We shouldn’t have
left you so long,” he said. “I hope
you
haven’t been annoyed.”

“Of course she’s been
annoyed!” General Sangore’s
stormy voice burst out
without the subtlety of Fairweather’s
snub. “It’s an
insult for that feller to speak to any decent
person
after his behaviour this morning. Damned if I know
what
he meant by it, anyway.”