The Saint smiled.
“Well, if that’s settled, let’s pass on to more entertaining subjects bordering on the carnal. Miss Winter, my car is just down the hill. If Bill is resigned to his fate, suppose we leave him and his playmates to their own fantastic devices and drift off into the night.”
Her face haloed with pleasure.
“I’d like it,” she said. “But I... I just can’t.”
“Why not? You’re over three years old. Nobody is sitting on your chest.”
“I can’t do what I like, somehow,” she said. “I can only do what I must. It’s always that way.”
“This,” the Saint said to nobody in particular, “sounds like one of those stories that fellow Charteris might write. And what’s the matter with you?” he demanded of Holbrook. “A little earlier you were eager to get rough with me because I admired the lady. Now you sit listening with disgusting indifference to my indecent proposal. I assure you it was indecent, from your viewpoint.”
Big Bill grinned.
“It just occurred to me. She can’t go with you. She must do what she must. She can’t get out of my sight. Good old Andy,” he added.
The Saint turned his eyes away and stared into space, wondering. His wandering gaze focused on a small wall mirror that reflected Dawn Winter. Her features were blurred, run together, an amorphous mass. Simon wondered what could have happened to that mirror.