She plumped herself down on the smallest available chair, which she eclipsed so completely that she seemed to be miraculously suspended some eighteen inches from the floor, and speared the Saint on an eye like an ice-pick.
"If you want to know all about iridium," she said, "I came to tell you about my husband."
Simon Templar had taken more obscure sequiturs than that in his stride. He offered her a cigarette, which she declined with fearful cordiality, and sank one hip on the edge of a table.
"Tell me about him."
"He's,been buying iridium in the black market. I heard him talking about it to Mr Linnet."
Her voice became a little vague towards the end of the sentence, as if her mind had already begun to wander. Her eye had already been wandering, but only in a very limited way. Nevertheless, it had not taken long to lose a large part of its impaling vigor. It was, in fact, becoming almost wistful.
"Do you like dancing?" she asked.
"I can take it or leave it alone," said the Saint cautiously. "Who is Mr Linnet?"
"He's in the same kind of business as my husband. He makes electrical things. My husband, of course, is president of the Ourley Magneto Company." Her rapidly melting eye traveled speculatively over the Saint's tall symmetrical frame. "You look as if you could do a wonderful rumba," she said.
Only the Saint's incomparable valor, which is already so well known to the entire reading public of the English-speaking world, enabled him to face the revolting tenderness of her smile without quailing.