"No, nothing," he said. "You only told him where to look for you. Haven't you realized that your telegram would be marked as handed in at Paddington? And do you think he's had a house here for all these years without knowing that Paddington is the station where you take off for Anford? And don't you think your telegram is going to remind him about it? And don't you think he's ever read any detective stories? And don't you think that that's just the half-witted break he'd credit you with at once from what he knows of you? He can afford the risk of being wrong; but where do you think is the first place he's going to look for you, just for luck? You — you female Uniatz, you've left him a trail a mile wide that leads straight to where you're sitting!"
At any other time her dismay might have been comical. She looked as if she were going to cry.
"D-do you really think he'll think of all that?"
"I know damn well he'll think of it. Has thought of it. There may be plenty of things about him I don't like, but he couldn't be where he is and be that dumb. And besides, he has Luker to help him think." Simon glanced at his watch. "By this time—"
He had no need to go into any further explanations of what might have happened by that time. A heavy knock on the door provided them for him.
The sound went down into the Saint's stomach as if he had swallowed a lump of lead. For an instant he felt as if all the blood stopped circulating in his veins, and his ears roared with the thunder of his own stillness. The knocking was so apt, so uncannily instantaneous on its cue, that for a fraction of a second he seemed to be jarred out of all power of movement.
And then he was very quiet and very cool. His glance whirled over the room: its masses of furniture provided half-a-dozen hiding places but none of them was any good. He took one step aside and looked out of the window. It opened on to the High Street, and the sidewalks were busy with people.
The Saint's eyes went back to Lady Valerie, and they were oddly, incredibly gay. But besides that reckless humour they carried something else that could only be described here in page after page of inadequate words. She stared at him in the frightened continuation of a stupor that had lasted longer than his own, while his eyes spoke to her with that queer vague message that awoke no less formless questions and answers in her brain, and the two of them seemed to be infinitely alone in a strange universe of their own where thoughts passed without words; all of that in an eternity that could only have lasted for a moment before his lips were shaping inaudible syllables:
"Let them in."
She got up, and he moved behind her and stood behind the door as she opened it, with his right hand resting lightly on the butt of his gun inside the breast of his coat.