"Mostly for fun. And from what they've told me about you, you might just as easily have been on our side. It doesn't do anyone any harm—"
The Saint's smile was as bright as an arctic noon.
"In fact," he said, "you're beginning to make me believe that it really did Pargo a lot of good."
She shrugged.
"You wouldn't have expected us to keep him after we knew he was selling us out to you, would you?" she asked, and the casual way she said it almost took the Saint's breath away.
"Of course not," he answered after a pause in which his brain whirled stupidly.
The dusk had been deepening very quickly, so that he could not be quite sure of the expression in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"Talk it over with your friends," she said in a quick low voice. "Try to go to Lulworth. I don't want anything else to happen… Good-bye. Here's the key of your car."
Her arm moved, and something tinkled along the road. As his eyes automatically turned to try and follow it she slipped aside and was out of his reach. The door of the black sedan slammed, its lights went on, and it rushed smoothly past him with the wave of a white glove. By the time he had found his own ignition key in the gloom where she had thrown it he knew that it was too late to think of trying to follow her.
The Saint's mind was working under pressure as he waited for Peter and Hoppy to join him at the corner of the inn. There was something screwy about that interview — something that made him feel as if part of the foundations of his grasp of the case were slipping away from under him. But for the present his thoughts were too chaotic and nebulous to share with anyone else.