"Thinking." He turned round empty handed, the pen back in his pocket. She had seen nothing. "This seems like a good time and place for it." Again his eyes were narrowed on her like keen blades of sapphire probing for the first hint of deception. "And talking of places — what made you pick on this one to come to?"
"Oh, that was something else that I thought was pretty clever of me. I mean, if you hadn't been following me, which was sort of cheating, you'd never have thought of looking for me here, would you? And it all came to me in a flash, just like that, when I was at the cloakroom in Paddington. You see, I had to go somewhere, and I couldn't go to my flat because everybody knows where that is, and I knew you and Algy and the Sons of France and everybody else would be looking for me, so I had to find somewhere to hide, and then I suddenly remembered reading in a detective story once that the best place to hide was the most obvious place, because nobody ever thought of looking in it. So then I thought, well, I was only down here a few days ago, and lots of awkward things were happening down here then, and so nobody would expect me to come back here. So I just got on the first train and came back; and I got hold of a porter just before the train went out and gave him a telegram to send to Algy and told him if he wanted to talk to me any more about these papers he could put an advertisement in the Morning Post… What's the matter?"
The Saint was standing and gooping at her as if he had been hit on the back of the head. It was a few moments before he recovered his voice.
"You sent Fairweather a telegram before the train left?"
"Yes."
"From Paddington?"
"Yes. You see—"
"Never mind what I see. You poor little blithering featherhead, can't you see what you did?"
"Did I do anything wrong?"
The Saint swallowed.