"Simon!"
"Hullo," sighed the Saint, starting up.
"What's the matter with you?" she demanded.
"Sorry," said the Saint. "I've had hardly any sleep for the last couple of nights, and I'm dead tired."
"What have you been doing?"
Simon stretched himself.
"Jill," he said, "you ought to have more faith in me. I haven't been on the tiles. I've been darn near them, though — there was a nasty bit of drain-pipe work on the way, and one hideous moment when I thought the gutter was going to come to pieces in me 'and. But it turned out all right, though I did some damage to the ivy—"
"You didn't break into Scotland Yard?"
"Who said I did?" asked the Saint, opening wide, childlike eyes of innocent astonishment.
The girl came over and sat on the arm of his chair. In her plain blue frock, with her lovely face innocent of the make-up which it never needed, she might have posed for a picture that would have made that studio famous, if Simon Templar had been an artist; and the Saint admired her frankly.