She laughed suddenly.
"And yet," she said, "you've proved you aren't a fool. If you hadn't, I'd have taken a lot of convincing… Are you ready?"
He glanced at his watch.
"The car should be here now," he said.
They went out to the car five minutes later — a luxurious limousine, with liveried chauffeur, ordered by telephone for the occasion.
Simon handed the girl in, and paused to give directions to the chauffeur.
It was a pure coincidence that Chief Inspector Teal should have been passing down Piccadilly at that moment. The car was not in Piccadilly, but at the side entrance of the hotel, in Arlington Street, which Teal was crossing. He observed the car, as he invariably observed everything else around him, with drowsy eyes that appeared to notice nothing and in fact missed nothing.
He saw a man speaking to a chauffeur. The man wore an overcoat turned up around his chin, a soft hat worn low over his eyes, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. It is surprising how much of a man's face those three things can hide between them — especially at night. Teal thought there was something familiar about the man, but he could not connect up the association immediately.
He stood at the corner of the Ritz and watched the man enter the car. He was not looking for Simon Templar at that moment. He was not, as a matter of fact, even thinking of Simon Templar. He had thought and talked of little else but Simon Templar for the last forty-eight hours, and his brain had wearied of the subject.
Thus it was that he stood where he was, inertly pondering, until the car turned into St. James's Street. As it did so, a woman leaned forward to throw a cigarette end out of the window, and the light of a street lamp fell full across her face.