"Oh no," she said. "I bought this myself with my own hard-earned money."
Simon sat up with impudently interrogative eyebrows.
"What hard-earned money?"
"The money from my memoirs," she said simply. "You see, I thought it would be a good idea to write my memoirs and sell them to one of the Sunday papers. They'd have been awfully thrilling, with all about you and Luker and Algy and everybody and all our adventures, and I thought they'd be a great success. I told Algy about it, and he thought so, too. In fact, he offered to buy them from me himself."
"Oh, did he?" said the Saint. "And how much did he give you for them?"
"He's given me ten thousand so far," she said artlessly,"but I expect he'll give me quite a generous wedding present as well. It's saved me a lot of trouble, too, because he doesn't actually want me to write them just yet, and I must say I wasn't looking forward to that because my spelling is lousy."
For several moments the Saint glared at her speechlessly.
"Damn you, young woman," he exploded. "Do you realize that Algy was my only chance of collecting any boodle out of this party? And after all I've done for you, you have the nerve to step in and knock him off under my nose!"
"I don't know about that," she said diffidently. "After all, I did find him first."
Simon Templar surrendered. He lay back and laughed helplessly.