Simon wanted seventy-three to finish, and the babble of chaff and facetious comment died down through sporadic resurrections as he took over the darts and set his toe on the line. His first dart went in the treble nineteen; and the stillness lasted a couple of seconds after that before a roar of delight acknowledged the result of the mental arithmetic that had been working itself out in the heads of the onlookers. His second dart brushed the inside wire of the double eight on the wrong side as it went in; and the hush came down again, more breathless than before. Somebody in a corner bawled a second encouraging calculation, and the Saint smiled. Quite coolly and unhurriedly, as if he had no distracting thought in his mind, he balanced the third dart in his fingers, poised it and launched it at the board. It struck and stayed there — dead in the centre of the double four.
A huge burst of laughter and applause crashed through the silence like a breaking wave as he turned away; and his opponent, who had been pushed forward as the local champion, grinned under his grey moustache and said: "Well, zur, the beer's on me."
The Saint shook his head.
"No, it isn't, George. Let's have a round for everybody on me, because I'm going to have to leave you."
He laid a ten-shilling note on the bar and nodded to the landlord as the patrons of the Broken Sword crowded up to moisten their parched throats. He glanced at his watch as he did so and saw that it showed sixteen minutes after nine. Zero hour had struck while he was taking his stand for those last three darts, but it had made no difference to the steadiness of his hand or the accuracy of his eye.
Even now it made no difference, and while he gathered up his change he was as much a part of the atmosphere of the small low-ceilinged bar as any of the rough, warm-hearted local habitues… But his eyes were on the road outside the narrow leaded windows, where the twilight was folding soft grey veils under the trees; and while he was looking out there she arrived. His ears caught the familiar airy purr of the Hirondel through the clamour around him before it swept into view, and he saw the brightness of her golden hair behind the wheel without surprise as she slowed by. It was curious that he should have been thinking for the last hour in terms of "she"; but he had been expecting nothing else, and in that at least his instinct had been faultless.
The boisterous human fellowship of the Broken Sword was swallowed up in an abyss as he closed the door of the public bar behind him. As if he had been suddenly transported a thousand miles instead of merely over the breadth of a threshold he passed into a different world as he faced the quiet road outside — a world where strange and horrible things happened such as the men he had left behind him to their beer would never believe, a world where a man's life hung on the flicker of an eyelid and the splitting of a second and where there was adventure of a keen, corrosive kind such as the simple heroes of mythology had never lived to see. The Saint's eyes swept left and right before he stepped out of the shadow of the porch, but he saw nothing instantly threatening. Even so, he found some comfort in the knowledge that Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz would be covering him from the ambush where he had posted them behind a clump of trees in the field over the way.
But none of that could have been read in his face or in the loose-limbed ease of his body as he sauntered over to the car. He smiled as he came up and saluted her with the faint mockery that was his fighting armour.
"It's nice of you to bring the old boat back, darling. And she doesn't look as if you'd bent her at all. There aren't many women I'd trust her with, but you can borrow her again any time you want to. Just drop in and help yourself — but of course I don't have to tell you to do that."
The girl was almost as cool as he was. Only a hardened campaigner like the Saint would have detected the sharp edges of strain under the delicate contours of her face. She patted the steering wheel with one white-gloved hand.
"She's nice," she said. "The others wanted to run her over a cliff, but I said that would have been a sin. Besides, I had to see you anyway."
"It's something to know I'm worth saving a car for," he murmured.
She studied him with a kind of speculative aloofness.
"I like you by daylight. I thought I should."
He returned her survey with equal frankness. She wore a white linen skirt and a cobwebby white blouse, and the lines of her figure were as delicious as he had thought they would be. It would have been easy, effortless, to surrender completely to the blood-quickening enchantment of her physical presence. But between them also was the ghostly presence of Pargo; and a chilling recollection of Pargo's livid distorted face passed before the Saint's eyes as he smiled at her.
"You look pretty good yourself, Brenda," he remarked. "Perhaps it's because that outfit looks a lot more like Bond Street than what you had on last night."
Her poise was momentarily shaken.
"How did you—"
"I'm a detective too," said the Saint gravely. "Only I keep it a secret."
She unlatched the door and swung out her long slender legs. As she was doing so a sleek black sedan swam round the nearest bend, slowing up, and turned in towards the front of the pub. The Saint's right hand stayed in his coat pocket, and his eyes were chips of ice for an instant before the driver got out unconcernedly as the car stopped and walked across to the entrance of the bar. The Saint could almost have laughed at himself but not quite; those reactions were too solidly founded on probabilities to be wholly humorous, and he was still waiting for the purpose of their meeting to be revealed.
The girl didn't seem to have noticed anything. She straightened up as her feet touched the road, flawless as a white statue, with the same impenetrable aloofness. She said: "There's your car. Would you like to take it and drive away? A long way away — to the north of Scotland or Timbuktu or anywhere. At least far enough for you to forget that any of this ever happened."
"The world is so small," Simon pointed out unhappily. "Twelve thousand miles is about the farthest you can get from anything, and that's not very far in these days of high-speed transport. Besides, I don't know that I want to forget. We've still got that date for a stroll in the moonlight—"
"I'm not joking," she said impatiently. "And I haven't got much time. The point is, I found out your name last night, but I didn't know who you were. I suppose I haven't been around enough in that kind of society. But the others knew."
"Look at the advantages of a cosmopolitan education," he observed. "There are more things in this cockeyed world than Bond Street—"
The stony earnestness of her face cut him off.
"This is serious," she said. "Can't you see that? If the others had had their way you wouldn't be here now at all. If you'd been anything else but what you are you wouldn't be here. But they've heard of you, and so it doesn't seem so easy to get rid of you in the obvious way. That's why I'm here to talk to you. If you'll leave us alone it'll be worth a hundred pounds a week to you, and you can draw the first hundred pounds this evening."
"That's interesting," said the Saint thoughtfully. "And where are these hundred travel tickets?"
"There '11 be a man waiting in a car with a GB plate at the crossroads in East Lulworth at half past ten. He'll be able to talk to you if you want to discuss it."
The Saint took her arm.
"Let's discuss it now," he suggested. "There's some very good beer inside—"
"I can't." She glanced a little to his left. "That other car's waiting for me — the one that just arrived. The man who brought it has gone out at the back of the pub, and he's only waiting a little way up the road to see that you don't keep me. It wouldn't be very sensible of you to try because he can see us from where he is, and if I don't pick him up at once there '11 be trouble." Her hand rested on his sleeve for a moment as she disengaged herself. "Why don't you go to Lulworth? It wouldn't hurt you, and it'd be so much easier. After all, what are you doing this for?"
"I might ask what you're doing it for."
"Mostly for fun. And from what they've told me about you, you might just as easily have been on our side. It doesn't do anyone any harm—"
The Saint's smile was as bright as an arctic noon.
"In fact," he said, "you're beginning to make me believe that it really did Pargo a lot of good."
She shrugged.
"You wouldn't have expected us to keep him after we knew he was selling us out to you, would you?" she asked, and the casual way she said it almost took the Saint's breath away.
"Of course not," he answered after a pause in which his brain whirled stupidly.
The dusk had been deepening very quickly, so that he could not be quite sure of the expression in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"Talk it over with your friends," she said in a quick low voice. "Try to go to Lulworth. I don't want anything else to happen… Good-bye. Here's the key of your car."
Her arm moved, and something tinkled along the road. As his eyes automatically turned to try and follow it she slipped aside and was out of his reach. The door of the black sedan slammed, its lights went on, and it rushed smoothly past him with the wave of a white glove. By the time he had found his own ignition key in the gloom where she had thrown it he knew that it was too late to think of trying to follow her.
The Saint's mind was working under pressure as he waited for Peter and Hoppy to join him at the corner of the inn. There was something screwy about that interview — something that made him feel as if part of the foundations of his grasp of the case were slipping away from under him. But for the present his thoughts were too chaotic and nebulous to share with anyone else.
"We've got a date to be shot up at East Lulworth at half past ten," he said cheerfully and gave them a literal account of the conversation.
"They're making you travel a bit before they kill you," said Peter. "Are you going on with this mad idea of yours?"
"It's the only thing to do if we're sticking to our plan of campaign. We're fish on the rise tonight, and we'll go on rising until we get a line if it—"
He broke off with his hand whipping instinctively to his pocket again as a bicycle whirred out of the shadows towards them at racing speed. The brakes grated as it shot by, and a man almost threw himself off the machine and turned back towards them. A moment later the Saint saw that it was Jopley.
"Thank Gawd I caught yer," he gasped. "I was afride it 'ud be too late. Yer mustn't go ter Lulworth tonight!"
"That's a pity," said the Saint tranquilly. "But I just made a date to go there."
"Yer carn't do it, sir! They'll be wytin' for yer wiv a machine gun. I 'eard 'im givin' the orders an' 'ow the lidy was ter meet yer 'ere an' tell yer the tile an' everythink—"
Simon became suddenly alert.
"You heard who giving the orders?" he shot back.
"The boss 'imself it was — 'e's at Gad Cliff 'Ouse naow!