She looked at him with limpid brown eyes big with artlessness.
"I'll give you a shilling for them," he said.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of selling them to you," she said innocently. "What I was thinking was that if I went to a fairly decent pub tonight — the Carlton, for instance, where I should be perfectly safe — and then I rang up Algy and told him he could have the papers for fifteen thousand pounds, he'd most likely do something about it. I mean, after what's happened tonight, he ought to consider himself damned lucky to get them for fifteen thousand. Don't you think so?"
"Very lucky," said the Saint, with fine-drawn patience. "Where are these papers at the moment?"
She smiled.
"They're in a cloakroom all right. I've got the ticket somewhere, only I forget exactly where. But I expect I'll remember all right when I have to."
"I expect you will," he said coldly. "Even if somebody like Dumaire has to help you."
Suddenly he got up and went over to her and took both her hands. The coldness fell out of his voice.
"Valerie, why don't you stop being an idiot and let me get into the firing line?"
She looked at him speculatively for a while, for quite a long while. Her hands were small and soft. He kept still, and heard a taxi rattle past the end of the street. But she shook her head.