The room was one of those quaint dormitoryes which have always made the English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was principally furnished with a gigantic imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation mahogany dressing table with a tilting mirror; a black-enamelled iron bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a marble-topped washstand bearing a china basin with a china jug standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horticultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reasonable care, just manage to find a path between them without having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in which Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had unsuccessfully tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that she had been perusing when the Saint came in.
Simon's satiric eye rested on the ends of documents that still protruded.
"If you'd told us you wanted something to read," he said, "we could have lent you some good books."
He leaned against the door, clothed in magnificent assurance, as if he had been conversationally breaking the ice with an old friend from whom he was sure to receive a cordial welcome.
He got it. The stunned astonishment dissolved out of her face and a broad schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.
"Well, I'm damned!" she said. "Aren't you marvellous? How on earth did you know I was here?"
He grinned in return. After all that he had been through to find her he couldn't help it.
"Haven't you heard about me?" he said. "I do these tricks for my living."
"Of course," she said. "I always knew you were supposed to be frightfully clever, but I didn't really believe you were as clever as all that… Oh well, we live and learn, and anyhow you haven't got it all your own way. I think I was pretty clever myself, the way I got away from your house. I worked it all out before I went to bed last night. Don't you think it was clever of me?"
"Very clever," he agreed. "But you see it was just the way I expected you to be clever."
She stared at him.
"The way you…"
"Yes."
"But you don't mean you—"
"Naturally," he lied calmly. "I knew that if you got away, the first thing you'd do would be to get hold of those papers, wherever you'd left them. I wanted to know where they were, and I didn't want to have to beat it out of you. So I just let you get away and fetch them for me."
"I don't believe you!"
"Would you like me to tell you all about it? I was behind you all the time. You picked up the ticket at the South Kensington post office, and then you went on and collected the package from the checkroom at Paddington. You took the first train down here, and you were driven up from the station by a bloke with no roof to his mouth and one of the oldest taxis on the road. Does that help?"
She looked as crestfallen as a child that has had a succulent lollipop snatched out of its mouth.
"I think you're beastly," she said.
"I know. Pigs move pointedly over to the other end of the sty when I come in. And now suppose you tell me what those papers were doing at Paddington."
"That's easy. You see I had them with me when I was coming down here for last week end, because of course I hadn't read them, and I was going to read them on the train and give them back to Johnny when I saw him. Then I thought if they had all these things in them that were so rude about Algy and General Sangore and the rest of them, perhaps I'd better not take them down with me, because Algy mightn't like it. So I just popped them in the cloakroom meaning to collect them on my way back. But then the fire happened, and — and everything, and I came back in Mr Luker's car, and what with one thing and another I forgot all about them until you started talking about them at the Berkeley. So after last night I thought I'd better see what they were all about."
"And what are they all about?"
"I don't know yet, but they look rather dull. You see, I'd only just started to look at them when you came in. I didn't like to open them on the train, because there were always other people in the carriage, and I didn't know if they might not see something they shouldn't see… You can look at them with me if you like. As a matter of fact, I–I meant you to have them anyway."
Simon gazed at her with the admiration reserved for very special occasions.
"Darling," he said, "how can I ever have managed to misjudge you?"
"But I did, really. You don't think I'd have let Algy have them after what happened last night, do you?"
"Of course not — unless he paid you a much bigger price for compensation."
"Aren't you a beast!" she said.
The Saint sighed.
"Do we have to go into that again?"
She considered him, pouting.
"But you do really like me quite a lot, don't you?"
"Darling, I adore you."
"Well, I hope you do, because if you don't I'm going to scream for help and bring the whole town in. On the other hand, provided you're reasonable…"
The Saint put his hands in his pockets. He was patient to the point of languor, completely sure of the eventual outcome. He could afford to bide his time. These preliminaries were incidental illuminations rather than delays.
"Yes, if I'm reasonable," he said. "Go on. I'm interested."
"What I mean," she said, "is this. You can't get away from the fact that I'm just as much entitled to these papers as you are. If it comes to that, I'm probably more entitled to them, because after all Johnny gave them to me. So if I let you see them, I don't see why we shouldn't work together. You suggested it first, anyway, and after all you do make lots of money, don't you?"
He smiled.
"I keep body and soul together. But do you really think I you'd like being shot at, and having people putting arsenic in your soup and blowing up bombs under your chair and all that sort of thing?"
"I might get used to it."
"Even to finding snakes in your bed?"
"Oh, but I'd expect you to look after me," she said solemnly. "You seem to survive all right, and I expect if I was with you most of the time I'd survive, too. You've got to look after me now, anyhow. It stands to reason that if you got the papers they'll be bound to know you got them from me, and you can't just laugh lightly and walk away and leave me to be slaughtered."
"Suppose we decide about that after we've seen what these papers are," he suggested gently.
She seemed to sit more tightly in her chair, and her smile was very bright.
"You mean we are working together now?" The Saint left the door. He was moving over towards her, still with his hands in his pockets, threading his way with easy nonchalance through the narrow footpaths between the furniture. The glimmer of lazy humour on his lips and eyes was cool and good natured, but under it was a quiet ruthlessness that cannons could not have turned aside.
"Don't let's misunderstand each other again," he said pleasantly. "I came here just to see those papers. Now I'm going to look at them. There aren't any conditions attached to it. If you want a wrestling match you can have one, but you ought to know that you'll only be wasting your strength. And if you want to scream you can scream, but I don't think you'll get out more than half a beep before I knock you out. And then when you wake up you'll have a headache and a pain in your jaw, and I shall be very sorry for you, but by that time I shall have finished my reading. Does that make everything quite clear?"
Her eyes blazed at him. All her limbs were tense. She looked as if she were going to scream and risk the consequences.
The Saint didn't move. He had arrived in front of her, and there he waited. In his immobility there was a kind of cynical curiosity. It was plain that she could do what she liked: he was only interested to see what she would choose to do.
And he wasn't bluffing. His cynicism was not really unkind. He would hate hurting her, but he meant every word he had said. Circumstance had put him on to a plane where the niceties of conventional chivalry could have no weight. And she knew that it was not worth taking up the challenge.
Her lower lip thrust out petulantly.
"Damn you," she whimpered. "Oh, damn you!"
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.
He bent over her and took the sheaf of papers out of her hand, from behind her, and touched her mouth lightly with his own as he did so.
She got up and flung herself away from him as far as the topography of the room would let her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, balanced for any action that might be forced upon him; but the moment of danger was past. She stood by the dressing table glowering at him and biting her lips in a way that he remembered. Her ill temper had something very childish and almost charming about it: she was like a little girl in a pet.
He sat down on the bed with the sheaf of papers in his hand.
"Are you going to Scotland for the grouse?" he inquired amiably.
She took her bag off the dressing table, jerked out a packet of cigarettes, lighted one and moved further away. She stood with her back to him, smoking furiously, tapping one foot on the threadbare carpet, the whole dorsal view of her expressive of raging contempt; but he observed that she was covertly watching him in the long mirror on the wardrobe.
The Saint lighted a cigarette himself and turned the pages of the dossier that had disordered so many lives and ended at least two of them.
At once he seemed to have forgotten her existence. He read more and more intently, with a frown of concentration deepening on his face. His intentness shut out everything beyond the information he was assimilating. For a long time there was no sound in the room except the irritating tattoo of Lady Valerie's toe beating on the floor, the rustle of paper and the creaking of rusty bedsprings as he stirred to turn a page.
And as he read on, a curious empty chill crept over him.
Lady Valerie fidgeted with the catch on the wardrobe door. She breathed on the mirror and drew silly faces with her forefinger in the cloud deposited by her breath, and went on stealing furtive glances at him. At last she turned round in a final fling of exasperation and stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer on the dressing table.
"Well," she said peevishly, "at least you might tell me what it's all about. Is it very interesting?"
"Wait a minute," he said, without looking up.
She pushed the saucer off the dressing table with an exasperated sweep of her hand. Instead of providing a satisfactory smash, it landed on the carpet with a thick plunk and rolled hollowly away over the linoleum under the washstand.
The Saint went on reading.
And as he came towards the end of the manuscript that dry deflated chill seemed to freeze the fire out of him and leave him numb with helpless bafflement.
For there was nothing in that bulky collection of documents that seemed to be worth much more than the paper it was written on in the way of powder and shot. There were the usual notes on the organization of the arms ring, principally taken from the British end, but none of it was very new. Much of it could have been found in such detailed surveys as Merchants of Death. There were notes on Luker's background, the puppet directors of his various companies, the ramifications of their many subsidiaries, their international affiliations, their political connections, their methods of business, together with well-authenticated samples of certain notable iniquities. It was all very interesting and highly scandalous, but it would cause no revolutions. Such exposes had been made before, but they had never done more than superficially ruffle the apathy of the great dumb populace which might have risen up in its wrath and destroyed them. And under the laws made by governments themselves financially interested and practically concerned in the success of the racket, if not actually subsidized by it, there were not even grounds for a criminal prosecution. It was only the kind of oft-repeated indictment that caused a temporary furore, during which the racketeers simply laid low and waited for nature to take its course and the birth of sextuplets in Kalamazoo to repossess the front pages of an indifferent press.
The latter part of the dossier was devoted to the Sons of France considered as part of a sales-promotion campaign backed by Luther and his associates. There was an educative outline of the machinery of the organization, some eye-opening copies of secret orders issued to members, specimens of its propaganda and declared objectives, in the usual Fascist jargon—"to eradicate Communism, Pacifism, and all such Jewish-inspired undermining of the heroic spirit of France… To institute state control, for the benefit of the people, over literature, art, motion pictures, radio and all other means of disseminating culture… To build up the military, naval and air strength of France so that French honour may be prepared to answer the insolence of the Hun." There was good evidence of financial support given to the organization by Luker and certain directors of the Fabrique Siebel des Armes de Guerre — but that, as Simon had pointed out to Teal, was probably not an offence under the law. There were a number of detailed records mostly made up from newspaper cuttings of certain rather revolting acts of violence and terrorism committed by alleged members of the Sons of France, but there was no evidence by which Luker and his associates could have been brought to book as their direct instigators. Certainly there was enough material to have brought down on Luker's head the moral indignation of the whole world, if the world had had any moral sense; but in the way of legal evidence of recognized crimes there wasn't enough to get him as much punishment as he would have earned by driving his car down Piccadilly at thirty-five miles an hour.
The last page of all was a sheet torn from a cheap memorandum block, on which someone seemed to have made a note of three functions or events, with their dates. The first and last were so heavily scored out as to be practically undecipherable, but the middle one was left plain and untouched in the centre of a frame of doodling arabesques such as a man draws on a pad during a conference. It read:
25 aout: Ouverture de I'Hospice de Memoire, а Neuilly, par M. Chaulage.
Fastened to it with a detachable clip was a photograph of three men, one of whom was Luker, apparently talking in an office. And in the bottom corner of the memorandum sheet was pencilled in a different hand, so quick and careless as to require a clairvoyant to read it:
Remember the R—?
The last word eluded even the Saint's powers of divination. And that was all there was.