It was beautifully put — that touch of sympathetic curiosity, the quiet assumption that they were now intimate enough to exchange notes. But Simon only laughed.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "this isn't a really truly relative, although I call him Auntie Ethel. But he views my indiscretions with a tolerant eye, and still believes that I shall reform one day. Now let's talk about supralapsarianism. I can't promise when I'll be in again, Jill, but it'll be as soon as I can make it…
She went with him to the door and watched him down the stairs, and felt unaccountably lonely when he had gone.
Simon went straight back to Upper Berkeley Mews. He had not been joking when he spoke of going to bed. He would have to be up again that night, and Heaven alone knew when he would get his next full night's rest.
But since he had not noticed Duodecimo Gugliemi before, the Saint did not miss him on the way home.
2
The Saint had been gone eight hours when a peal on the bell rang sharply through the studio and set the girl's heart pounding against her ribs.
No one should have rung that bell. The Saint himself had a key, and no tradesmen ever called, for obvious reasons. Who it could be outside, therefore, except a detective whom the Saint had not been so clever in shaking off as he had believed:.
As she stood by the table with her brain in a whirl the ring was repeated.
She went to the window and looked out and down into the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen there — no signs of a cordon or even of one or two men told off to wait for an escape by another exit. As for the man at the door, it was impossible to inspect him; for the entrance of the studio was on the third and top floor of the building, and the architect, not knowing that his building was ever to be used for sheltering a wanted criminal, had omitted to provide a window looking out onto the landing, or any other similar means of inspecting callers before opening the front door.