"Aren't you thoughtful for me, Simon Templar?"
"We don't mind doing these things for old customers," said the Saint benignly.
He was still looking at her. The bantering gaze of his blue eyes from under the lazily drooping eyelids, the faint smile, the hint of a lilt of laughter in his voice — these things could rarely have been more airily perfect in their mockery.
"And while you're on your way," said the Saint, "you might have time to remember that I never asked you to become a customer. You're making the most blind paralytic fool of yourself that ever a woman made of anything that God had given her such a long start on! But that's your own idea, isn't it? Now go ahead and prove it's right. Go to Birmingham, take that diseased blot of a Stephen Weald with you—"
Weald stepped forward.
"What did you say, Templar?"
"I said 'diseased blot of a Stephen Weald,' " said the Saint pleasantly. "Any objection?"
"I have," said Weald. "This—"
He struck the Saint three times in the face with his fist.
"… and this — for the first time I met you."