It was precisely what the Saint would have predicted, and the sheer cosmic inevitability of it gave him the same feeling of Olympian omnipotence that a master dramatist must experience as he sees the last loose ends of his play falling into place with flawless accuracy in the third act.
“I think that’s a swell idea,” he said.
He was afraid even then that Valerie would rebel, but terror seemed to have built up in her until she was gripped in a kind of trance that left her without volition.
They drove with Olivant at the wheel of a glistening new car, all three of them pressed together in the front seat, so that Simon could feel the rigidity of her body against him shaken by an occasional shiver, and knew that Olivant must have felt it too, though the man chattered incessantly about nothing and Simon did his best to help keep the empty conversational ball rolling.
Once, while they were still passing through the Bois de Boulogne, Olivant broke off in the middle of a sentence and said, “Are you nervous, Miss North? Believe me, I drive most careful.”
“I guess I’m just over-tired,” she said. “Or else I’m catching a chill.”
“I know, you ’ave ’ad a shocking day.”
She turned to the Saint, leaning closer to him.
“Where are we?”
He hadn’t wanted to refer to it, but he had to.