It was all there. He didn’t have to say, “You know he’s in love with you, of course. But how do you feel?” And she didn’t have to answer, “I don’t know now, since you came here. So what about you?” And that saved him from having to say, “We should be afraid of this. It’s got to be something we’re both imagining. It musn’t be anything else.” But those words were all there, intuitively, unspoken, so that it was as though he knew she was reading it all out of his mind just as her mind couldn’t deceive his, and he knew it and couldn’t stop it, and didn’t want to, only it was not so cold that way as it would have been in words. And so they talked idly about everything else, and this was all they said all the time.
It was soon after two when they rode down to the ranch house. There was an unfamiliar car parked outside, a green coupe, and an unfamiliar man rose from a chair on the porch as they stepped up, and bowed with insinuating politeness.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
He wore a greenish speckled tweed suit, conventionally cut on city lines and complete right down to the waistcoat with a gold watch-chain strung across the stomach, and he carried a green felt hat with a feather in it, so that he looked rather as if he had been outfitted to correspond with a Bronx tailor’s specifications for a country gentleman’s costume. He was of medium height and soft in the middle. His face was round and pink and a little shiny, and his smooth brow extended back over the top of his head, like a polished atoll surrounded by a surf of sandy grey hair. His eyes were pale gunmetal, and looked like small marbles behind the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles. They anatomised the girl rather completely, and turned back to Simon.
“Are you Mr Don Morland?”
“Mr Morland isn’t here,” said the Saint coolly. “But I’m his manager. Can I help you?” The other pursed his small red lips.
“Of course. Of course. Mr Morland would be an older man.” He spoke English perfectly, yet he could have been neither American nor English. His accent was faultless, but his voice was pitched in the wrong part of his mouth. “So you’re his manager. Yes. You mean you are in absolute charge of all his affairs?”
“Just that,” said the Saint pleasantly.
It is only a matter of history that he never even paused to wonder whether Jean Morland would fail to back him up, but without looking at her he could sense that she hadn’t betrayed him by the flick of an eyelid.
“I see.” The tone was much too ingratiating to be sceptical, but the cautious advance was there just the same. “So that any business proposition he received would have to be referred to you?”