Simon gave up the struggle. Actually he felt a colder anger against the men who had used the girl as their tool. The possibility that she might have been something more than an unsuspecting instrument was one which he discarded almost at once. She had already told him far too much. And her mind, whatever its obvious failings, could never have worked that way.
"Where did Kennet and Windlay live?" he asked flatly.
"Oh, miles from anywhere, out in Notting Hill, in an awful place called Balaclava Mansions."
"Notting Hill isn't miles from anywhere," said the Saint. "The trouble with you is that you've never heard of any place outside the West End. You've got a brain; why don't you get reckless and try using it?"
She sighed.
"My God," she said. "Now you're going to come over all earnest on me. You think I ought to have a good hiding for the way I treated Johnny. I suppose my intentions weren't serious enough. I oughtn't to have pretended something I didn't mean. Is that it?"
"More or less," he said bluntly.
He wondered what excuse she was going to make for herself.
She didn't make any excuse. She laughed.
"You have the nerve to stand there, in your beautiful clothes, with your dark hair and dashing blue eyes, and tell me that," she said startlingly. "I bet you've made love to heaps of women yourself, hundreds of times, and never meant a word of it."