She laughed softly.
"The trouble is to make anyone believe I really want to work. I'm rather pretty, you know, when you see me properly. I seem to put ideas into middle-aged heads."
She was led on to tell him so much about herself that they had reached her address in Bloomsbury before she had remembered that she had not even asked him his name.
"Templar — Simon Templar," he said gently.
She was in the act of fitting her key into the front door, and she was so startled that she turned around and stared at him, half doubtful whether she ought to laugh.
But the man in the leather coat was not laughing, though a little smile was flickering round his mouth. The light over the door picked out the clean-cut buccaneering lines of his face under the wide-brimmed filibuster's hat, and glinted back from the incredibly clear blue eyes in such a blaze of merry mockery as she had never seen before… It dawned upon her, against all her ideas of probability, that he wasn't pulling her leg…
"Do you mean that I've really met the Saint?" she asked dizzily.
"That's so. The address is in the telephone book. If there's anything else I can do, any time —"
"Angels and ministers of grace!" said the girl weakly, and left him standing there alone on the steps; and Simon Templar went laughing back to his car.
He came home feeling as pleased as if he had won three major wars single-handed, for the Saint made for himself an atmosphere in which no adventure could be commonplace. He pitched his hat into a corner, swung himself over the table, and kissed the hands of the tall slim girl who rose to meet him.