"I imagine it is," he said. "The shipment that was hijacked in Nashville. Or about two-thirds of it. That would be about right — a third of the shipment must be in black market circulation by this time."
He squinted down at the suitcase again as he reached for a cigarette, and his eyes settled on the combination of letters at which the lock had opened.
"Do the initials O S M mean anything to you?" he asked.
"No. Why?"
Her face was completely empty. He was watching her. And so much depended on whether he was right, and whether he could see through the beauty of her face and not let it color what he was looking for. "Skip it," he said. "It was just an idea."
He lighted his cigarette, while she sat down heavily on the bed and stared at him in that numb kind of bewilderment. Her hands trembled slightly in her lap.
He said: "Your boy friend parked this stuff here with you — safely enough, because this is one of the last places where anybody would look for it. Probably even his best friends don't know anything about his connection with this place. And even if anybody who knew too much already did know, they'd never expect him to be so dumb as to leave a couple of hundred grand's worth of boodle lying around in a love-nest. Which is what we call the technique of deception by the obvious… Yes, it was a good place to cache the swag. But now, apparently, your mysterious meal ticket is getting nervous. Maybe he's a little afraid of you and what you know. So he sent Humpty and Dumpty here to fetch it away." The Saint had slipped out of cold cruelty again as impersonally as he had slid into it. He said quietly: "Now what?"
She nodded like a mechanical doll.
"Just give me a chance," she begged. "If I can only make it right with myself… Can't you give me just a little time?"
He was sure now, and his decision was made. It was no part of him to look back.