The Saint straightened up involuntarily as Hoppy's grisly memoirs hit a mark which he himself had been unconsciously avoiding. Now that the point was brought home to him, his first impulse was to shut it out again; and yet nagging little needle points of incontrovertible logic went on fretting at the opening that had been made.
The timetable made it impossible for her to have deliberately co-operated from the start in dumping the body where he had found it. But she might have met the dumping party on their way to the house and come in to hold him up while they were doing their job. She might have known from the beginning that the dumping was to be done. She might have had the information that had been tortured out of Pargo to lead her there, without the necessity of following the lorry as she said she had done. She might have seen the body in the porch before she let herself in through the unlocked door and come in unperturbed by it. In any case, as a confessed member of the gang that had done the job, was there any logical reason to presume that she knew nothing about their methods? Unsentimentally the Saint acknowledged that golden hair and a face like a truant princess were no proof of a sensitive and lovable character. It was a pity, but the world was like that… The expression on his face did not change.
"She must have been a beauty," he murmured absently.
"Sure, boss, she wuz de nuts. She wuz like a real lady. But I never could make de grade wit' dese ritzy dames." Mr Uniatz sighed lugubriously in contemplation of the unappreciativeness of the female sex, and then his gaze reverted to the figure on the couch. "Dis guy," he said, gesturing with his bottle, "is he de guy we're waitin' for tonight?"
The Saint lighted a cigarette and turned away.
"That's right," he said. "Only we don't have to wait any longer."
"De guy from de goil's mob?"
"Yes."
"De guy who drives de foist truck we hijack?"
"Yes."