4
Her first stop was at the South Kensington post office. The Saint's eyes went cold and brittle when he saw the Daimler slowing up: Exhibition Road was too wide and unfrequented for any car to be unnoticeable in it. Fortunately on that account he had let himself fall some distance behind her. He jammed on the brakes and whipped round into Imperial Institute Road, and felt that the gods had been kind to him when he saw that she crossed the sidewalk and entered the post office without looking round. Clearly it had not occurred to her that she could have been picked up by that time.
He made a U turn in the side road and parked near the corner. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he got out and walked up towards the post-office entrance. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but a theory was already taking solid form in his mind. He had used that trick himself. Mail anything you want to hide, addressed to yourself at a poste restante in any name you can think of: where could it be safer or harder to find?
She came out so quickly that he was almost caught. He turned in a flash and stood with his back to her, taking out his cigarette case and deliberating lengthily over his selection of a cigarette. Reflected in the polished inside of the case, he saw her cross the pavement again, still without looking round, and get back into the car.
But he had been wrong. As she came out she was putting an envelope into her bag, but it was only a small one — obviously too small and thin to contain such a dossier as Kennet must have given her.
His brain leaped to encompass this reversal. Her cloakroom story must have been true, then: she had simply given herself double cover, mailing the ticket to herself at the poste restante. His imagination bridged the gaps like a bolt of lightning. Without even turning his head to check his observations, without letting himself indulge a further instant's vacillation, he started back towards his own car.
And in the middle of the next stride he stopped again as if he had run into an invisible wall.
Where he had left the Hirondel there was now another car drawn up alongside it — a lean, drab, unobtrusive car that hid its speedy lines under a veneer of studiously sombre cellulose, a car which to the Saint's cognizant eye carried the banners of the mobile police as plainly as the sails on a full-rigged ship, even before he saw the blue-uniformed man at the wheel and the other blue-uniformed man who had got out to examine the Hirondel at close quarters. The dragnet was out, and this was the privileged one out of the hundreds of patrol cars that must even then have been scouring the city for him that had located its gaudy quarry. If he had waited in the car they would have caught him.
But his guardian angel was still with him. They must have arrived only a moment ago, and they were still too wrapped up in the discovery of the Hirondel to have started looking round for the driver.
The Saint had spun round as soon as he saw them. He was between two fires now, but Valerie Woodchester was the less formidable. He whipped out a handkerchief and held it over the lower part of his face as he started up the road again. The Daimler was pulling out from the curb, moving on towards Kensington Gardens. On the opposite side of the road a taxi had pulled up to discharge its freight. Simon walked over towards it with long space-devouring strides that gave a deceptive impression of having no haste behind them. He climbed into the offside door as the passenger paid his fare.