Simon lighted a cigarette as if it tasted of bad eggs and scowled malevolently about the room.
"The skunk! And so you get chucked out into the wide world with nothing but a hundred dollars."
"And the letters," she added ruefully.
"What the hell are these letters?"
"They're love letters," she said; and the Saint looked as if he would explode.
"Love letters?" he repeated in an awful voice.
"Yes. Granny had a great romance when she was a girl. Her parents wouldn't let her get any further with it because the boy hadn't any money and his family wasn't good enough. He went abroad with one of these heroic young ideas of making a fortune in South America and coming back in a gold-plated carriage to claim her. He died of fever somewhere in Brazil very soon after, but he wrote her three letters — two from British Guiana and one from Colombia. Oh, I know them by heart — I used to have to read them aloud to Granny almost every night, after her eyes got too bad for her to be able to read them herself. They're just the ordinary simple sort of thing that you'd expect in the circumstances, but to Granny they were the most precious thing she had. I suppose she had some funny old idea in her head that they'd be just as precious to me."
"She must have been screwy," said the Saint. Jacqueline came up and put a hand over his mouth. "She was very good to me when I was a kid," she said.
"I know, but—" Simon flung up his arms hopelessly. And then, almost reluctantly, he began to laugh. "But it does mean that I've just come back in time. And we'll have so much fun tonight that you won't even think about it for a minute."
Probably he made good his boast, for Simon Templar brought to the solemn business of enjoying himself the same gay zest and inspired impetuosity which he brought to his battles with the technicalities of the law. But if he made her forget, he himself remembered; and when he followed her into the living room of the house again much later, for a good-night drink, the desolate scene of interrupted packing, and the copy of the will still lying on the table where he had put it down, brought the thoughts with which he had been subconsciously playing throughout the evening back into the forefront of his mind.