Carn frowned. He had been badly had. The Saint’s merciless leg-pulling had achieved its object. So masterly was the transition from teasing to sober seriousness that the seriousness went unquestioned, and Carn swallowed whole a story that he would certainly have disbelieved if it had been told him in the first place without any nonsense.
“No offence, old thing,” pleaded the Saint contritely. “I couldn’t miss such a marvellous opportunity to make you imagine the worst.”
Carn looked from one to the other; but Patricia, pulling her weight and more also, met the detective’s searching stare unabashed, and the Saint’s face displayed exactly what the Saint wanted it to display.
“I tried to tell you once,” Patricia pointed out, “only Mr. Templar interrupted.”
Simon flashed her a boatload of appreciation in a glance. Ye gods! What a girl! There wasn’t an actress in the world who could have taught her anything about the kind of acting that gets over without any stage effects—she had every woman in every Secret Service in Europe skinned a mile. There she was, cool as you please, playing up to her cue like an old hand. And, marvel of marvels, asking no questions. The Saint hadn’t the foggiest notion why a girl he’d only known a couple of days should back him up like that, when every flag on the mast would have told any ordinary person that the Saint was more likely to be wrong than not. Ordinary respectable people did not go in for the hobbies that she had seen the Saint indulging in—like bending statuettes over millionaire knights’ skulls after walking mysteriously out of the night through their library windows, or being chased round gardens by men and bloodhounds, or chucking their lady friends over eight-foot walls. And yet she trusted him implicitly, took her line from him, and postponed the questions till afterwards! And not the least remarkable fact was that the Saint, that consummate egotist, never thought of the obvious explanation. . . .
Carn reddened again, recovered his normal colour, and his stolid features gradually lost their strained appearance and relaxed into a wry smile.
“You certainly did try to save me, Miss Holm,” he admitted. “You see, the Saint—that is, Mr. Templar—he’s always running into trouble, and seeing him like that I couldn’t help thinking of his habits. It didn’t occur to me that you were with him—I was so dense it didn’t strike me that you might have got mussed up at the same time as he did—and, of course, I know all about you, Miss Holm, so——”
“Half-time!” begged the Saint dazedly. “We’re getting all tied up. Let’s call it quits.”
Carn nodded.
“Saint,” he said, “it wasn’t fair. I’m taking this game seriously, and that’s quite bad enough without tangling it any more.”