The Saint raised his eyebrows.
"Still that story?" he protested. "How can I convince you?"
"Don't bother to try," she answered. "But if you'd like to come to 97, Belgrave Street, at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, we'll be there."
"So shall I," said the Saint cheerfully. "And I give you my word of honour I shall come alone."
He held her eyes for a moment, and then he was gone; but a few seconds later he was back again as the self-starter burred under her foot.
"By the way," he said calmly, "I have to warn you that you'll receive a summons for standing here all this time with your lights out. Sorry, I'm sure."
He stood by the side of the road and watched the lights of the car out of sight. Perhaps he was laughing. Perhaps he was not laughing. Certainly he was amused. For the Saint, in his day, had made many enemies and many friends; yet he could recall no enemy that he had made for whom he felt such an instinctive friendliness. That he had gone out of his way to make himself particularly unpleasant to her was his very own business. his very own. Simon Templar had his own weird ideas of peaceful penetration.
But the smile that came to his lips as he stood there alone and invisible would have surprised no one more than Jill Trelawney, if she could have seen it.
He carried in his mind a vivid recollection of tawny golden eyes darkened with anger, of a golden head tilted in inimitable defiance, of an implacable hatred flaming in as lovely a face as he had ever seen. Jill Trelawney. She should have been some palely savage Scandinavian goddess, he thought, riding before the Valkyries with her golden hair wild in the wind.
As it was, she rode before what it pleased his own sense of humour to call the "Lady's maids" — and that, he admitted, was a very practical substitute.