To Hugh Clevely
Chapter I
How Simon Templar met Jill Trelawney,
and there were skylarking and
song in Belgrave street
1
THE big car had been sliding through the night like a great black slug with wide, flaming eyes that seared the road and carved a blazing tunnel of light through the darkness under the over-arching trees; and then the eyes were suddenly blinded, and the smooth pace of the slug grew slower and slower until it groped itself to a shadowy standstill under the hedge.
The man who had watched its approach, sitting under a tree, with the glowing end of his cigarette carefully shielded in his cupped hands, stretched silently to his feet. The car had stopped only a few yards from him, as he had expected. He stooped and trod his cigarette into the grass and came down to the road without a sound. There was no sound at all except the murmur of leaves in the night air, for the subdued hiss of the car's eight cylinders had ceased.
Momentarily, inside the car, a match flared up, revealing everything there with a startling clearness.
The rich crimson upholstery, the handful of perfect roses in the crystal bracket, the gleaming silver fittings — those might have been imagined from the exterior. So also, perhaps, might have been imagined the man with the battered face who wore a chauffeur's livery; or the rather vacantly good-looking man who sat alone in the back, with his light overcoat swept back from his spotless white shirt front, and his silk hat on the seat beside him. Or, perhaps, the girl…