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 Hampton Court, and turned off over the bridge along the road by Hurst Park; in Walton they turned right again, and a few miles later they turned under a brick archway into what seemed like a dense wood. A few more turns, and the car swung into a circular drive and swept its headlights across the front of a big weather-tiled house set in a grove of tall pines and silver birches.