Saint Steps In (23 page)

He
opened the cabinet and brought over a bottle and two
glasses, and poured for them both. She sat with her
long
shapely legs tucked under her on a divan behind
the low table.
He took an armchair facing
her, and sniffed his glass guard
edly. It had a fine aroma, but he only
sipped it.

They gazed at
each other thoughtfully.

“Did I forget to tell you about my etchings?” she asked.

His mouth stirred
slightly.

“Maybe you did.”

“You don’t approve of the way I lured you up here.”

“I think it
was charming.”

“Then why do you have to stay miles over there?”

“I was just waiting for your father to come bursting in with
a shotgun and insist on your making an
honest man out of
me.”

“You
are
careful, aren’t you?” she said again.

“It’s a bad habit I got into,” he said.

She
emptied her glass and pushed it towards him. He re
filled it expressionlessly and set it back in front
of her. She
stared at him sullenly,
nipping one thumbnail between her
white front teeth. She looked very young, very spoiled, and
distractingly accessible.

“Why do you hate me so much?” she demanded.

“I don’t,” he said pleasantly.

“I
think I could hate you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn
it, I do hate you! What am I doing this for? I never run after men. They run
after me. And I let them run and run.
I’m not a bit interested in you, really. I can’t even think
why
I let you talk me into
having dinner with you tonight.”

“Could it be
for the same reason that I let you talk me into
taking you out?”

Her eyes were big with the pale blank look that he had seen
in them before.

“Now
you’re even making me shout at you,” she com
plained. “Come over here, for Christ’s sake. I won’t bite you
much.”

She
patted the divan next to her with an imperious hand.
He shrugged, more with his lips and eyes than with his shoulders, and
moved peaceably around the table.

She
picked up the second taster of brandy, still watching
him across the brim, and drained it with one quick
decisive
tilt.

Then suddenly her face was leaning into his face, and her
mouth was searching for his, and it was a kiss that began
and
clung and demanded. He was still under
it for a moment, but
he couldn’t always be still, and this was what he
was there for
anyway, and he took what it
was, and his arms slipped around
her,
and he wanted it to be as good as it could be; but his
mind stood aside
and watched. And perhaps it didn’t stand so
far
aside, because her lips were soft and yielding and taking
and her breath was warm and sweet in his nostrils
and her hair
in his eyes and all the richness of her pressed against him
and
moulding hungrily against him; and he
wasn’t made out of
wood even if he
knew that he must be.

So after a long
time he let her go, and he was much too sure
that
his pulses were running faster no matter what his mind
did.

She looked smug and angry at the same time.

“You’ve exciting, too, and you know it, which makes it four
times worse,” she said
petulantly.

“I’m
sorry,” he murmured. “I always seem to be apologizing,
but it isn’t my fault, really.”

“I hate
you,” she said broodingly.

She picked up the bottle, poured herself some more brandy,
and put the bottle down again after an
accusing glance at his
glass.

“You aren’t even polite enough to drown it in drink.”

“I’m afraid
you took my mind off that.”

He absorbed half the glass while she finished hers.

“All you’re concerned with is your damned mysteries,” she
said. “I think you’re the most
exciting thing that ever hap
pened,
but I can’t make a mystery out of that. So you’re all set
to turn me down before we start. I
suppose if I were some
stupid little ing
é
nue like
Madeline Gray I wouldn’t be able to
fight you off.”

He raised satirical eyebrows.

“Darling,
you couldn’t be jealous, could you?”

“Jealous?
I’m just mad. I don’t like being turned down. I
must have done something wrong, and I want to know
what it
is. Damn it, I’m not going to fall for
you.”

“Now I am going to be careful.”

“You won’t even let me help you with this job you’re work
ing on. You told me once I might be
able to do something for
you one day, but you still haven’t asked me. You won’t even
tell me anything.”

“I
can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“You know more than you’ve told me. But you keep me at arm’s
length all the time. Anyone would think you still thought
I was an Axis agent, or whatever you
said.”

His pulses were all quiet again. This was what he was there
for, too; and it couldn’t wait forever.
It was like fencing on
a
tightrope in the dark, with nothing to guide him but intui
tion and audacity and a sense of timing
that had to balance
on knife
edges.

He
said: “What about that German baron?”

“That frozen pain in the neck? He wasn’t a Nazi. At least,
I don’t think so. But that was before
the war anyway.” Then
her eyes turned back to him curiously. “How did you know
about him?”

“I asked a few questions.”

“What else
did you find out about me?”

“I
found out that you were quite often interested in people
that your father has been interested
in.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I didn’t mean that kind of interest.”

She poured herself another drink, but this time she only drank half of
it at the first try. She put the glass down and
gazed at it somberly.

“I help Daddy out sometimes,” she said. “It’s the least
a girl
can do, isn’t it? And I
have a lot of fun. I go to nice places and I hear some intelligent
conversation. I can’t live with young
squirts
and playboys all the time.”

“After
all,” he agreed, “there are the Better Things in Life.”

“You’re
still sneering at me. At least Daddy doesn’t think
I’m too dumb to help him.”

He nodded.

“The one thing I’ve been wondering about is—doesn’t he
think you’re too dumb, or does he think
you’re just dumb
enough?”

Her
eyes dwelt on him with that bafflingly vacant candor.

“I
don’t ask all those questions. What I don’t know won’t
do me any harm, will it? And it isn’t any of my
business, espe
cially
if I have a good time. I don’t want to be a genius. I just
want you to pay some attention to me.”

“Like
you wanted me to pay some attention to you when
your father sent you to talk to me at the Shoreham?”

“There
wasn’t any harm in that. He only wanted to know
more about you and find out what you’d been
doing.”

“And what did he want you to find out tonight?” asked the
Saint amiably.

His voice didn’t have a point in it anywhere; it was the same
gentle and faintly bantering sound that
it had been all the
time;
but he was waiting.

She
didn’t try to escape his innocuous half-smiling glance.
Her stare was blue and blind and
limpid and babyishly sad.

“I
told him all about our running into each other, of course, and what we talked
about; and I said I was going to meet you
for dinner. But this was all my own idea. I wish I
did know
what there was between you and Daddy. I don’t
think you like him any more than you like me.”

“I’ve never
met him, if you remember.”

“If you had, you wouldn’t be so suspicious. He said the nic
est things about you.”

“I love my
public.”

“You’re impossible.”

She took up her glass again and finished it, and made a
grimace.

She
said: “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time. You
aren’t worth it. But you can’t get away with this.
You stink.
And I’m going to get
stinking. Make me some more brandy.
I have to
Go,” she said abruptly.

She got up and went.

The
Saint sat where he was and lighted a cigarette. He sat
with it smouldering between his fingers. After a little while he
lifted the brandy bottle and topped up her glass.

He faced it, that he didn’t know whether he was getting
everywhere or nowhere. There were
factors that still didn’t
tie in. And he had to be as light with his foil as if he had been
combing cobwebs. He could still be so
irremediably wrong. He had been wrong about Imberline. He still didn’t know
whether one of his later passes had found any crevice. She
could be dumb. How much would Quennel
tell her? Or she
could be
brightly dumb, as she had said, asking no questions
because they might only create problems. He didn’t
know how
much the brandy would speak
for her either. He was only
sure that it could be a weapon on his side, if it was on any
side.

He heard water running in the bathroom, and then a door
opening, and then she was in the bedroom.

She was moving
about in there for what seemed like a long
time.
He didn’t turn his head. He took a very light sip from
his glass. But
there were no frightening effects. He had been
making it last, cautiously; but he could be positive by now
that
there was nothing illegal creeping up from it.

He smoked meditatively. She didn’t come back.

Then her voice reached him peevishly: “What about my
drink?”

“Did you want it?”

“What do you
think?”

He stood up, garnered the glass he had filled for her, and sauntered
into the bedroom.

She lay in the big bed, her white shoulders clear of the covers,
looking pleased with herself like a naughty child who is
getting away with something. There was a dress and
stockings
and lacy intimacies scattered
about the room, but he didn’t
have to
total them up to deduce how naked she was. She had
a naked expression on her beautifully empty face
that had far
more impact than the
mere fact of nudity. It matched the
mindless
acquiescence of her big cornflower eyes—he had a
name for that impenetrable enigma at last. He didn’t have a
name quite so facile for the disturbance that she
was always on the verge of driving through all his casualness.

He knew that this
was a deadline, and in an odd way he was
afraid
of it, but he didn’t let any of that escape from his con
trol.

“I see you like to be comfortable,” he drawled.

He carried her drink over to her. She took it out of his
hand, and raised herself so that the
sheets hung perilously from
the galvanizing surge of her breasts. He sat on the side of the
bed without staring at her.

“Tell me
something,” she insisted.

He
waited while she put half an ounce of brandy away,
drawing placidly on his cigarette and flicking ash on
to the
carpet. Then he said,
without any change of tone: “A friend
of mine gave me a ride in from Stamford today. Name
of
Schindler. We were talking about
you.”
  

2

He must have been
expecting more than he got.

She said: “Schindler? Oh, yes. The detective.”

“He
had a man watching Madeline Gray. Name of
Angert.
On some fairy-tale about her being
blackmailed.”

“That’s right.”

“Because you hired him.”

After that it reached her. She sat up so that the covers were
called on for a miracle that they
were scarcely equal to.