"Where?"
"At his house. I've been there before. Shall I forget it?" She smiled at him, and he laughed. "That's where he'll be expecting me, from today onwards. He wouldn't expect me to write — he knows me too well."
"And if he knows you so well," said the Saint, "he'll be expecting trouble."
"Of course."
"And he's going to get it?"
With a cup of coffee in her hand, the girl answered, quite calmly: "A year ago I swore to kill every man who had a hand in ruining my father. Waldstein is dead. I suspect Essenden. If I find proof against him—"
"That was my way, once," said the Saint quietly. "But doesn't it ever occur to you that you might be doing much better work if you looked for the evidence to clear your father's name, instead of merely looking for revenge?"
Jill Trelawney said: "My father died."
Simon had nothing to say.
They spent another inactive day, reading and talking desultorily. To Simon Templar, those long conversations were fascinating and yet maddening. She never spoke of the Angels of Doom, or the charge that lay against her, or the unchanged inflexibility of her purpose. These things remained as a dark background to her presence: they were never allowed to steal out of the background, and yet they could not be escaped. Against that background Simon Templar felt himself a stranger. Not once yet, in that bizarre alliance of theirs, had he been allowed to enter into the secret places of her mind. But he played up to her. Because she had that air of unawareness, he left her unaware. He tried no cross-examinations. She was the soloist: he was the accompaniment, heard, valuable, perfectly attuned, but subordinate and half ignored. It was one of the most salutary experiences of the Saint's violent life. But what else could he do? The mind of a woman with an Idea is like a one-way street: you have to run with the traffic, or get into trouble.