"Anford," said the Saint gutturally.
"Anford," said the porter, keeping his end up without any sign of fatigue. "Where would that be, sir?"
"It would be in Wiltshire. You change at Marlborough."
"Ar, Marlborough." The porter scratched his head. "Marlborough. Marlborough. Then it's a Marlborough train you'd be wanting, sir."
Simon overcame a fearful impulse to assault him.
"Yes. I could manage with a Marlborough train."
"There's one just leaving from platform six," said the man laboriously, as though a dark secret were being dragged out of him, "but I dunno as how you'd have time to catch that one—"
The Saint left him to be his own audience. He was off like a bolt out of a crossbow, plunging along towards an ancient smoky board that did its best not to reveal the whereabouts of platform six. And while he was on his way he was trying to place this new and unexpected destination of Lady Valerie's. Was she going there because she was at Paddington and it was the first place that came into her head? Or was she subtle enough to think that it was the last place where she would be looked for? Or had she some positive purpose? Or…
Something seemed to go off like a silent bomb inside the Saint's chest. The concussion threw his heart off its beat, squeezed all the air out of his lungs; his legs felt as if the marrow had been sucked out of the bones. He kept on walking through nothing but sheer muscular automatism.
There was one thing he had forgotten, and he had almost walked straight into it.