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When she
said no, he signalled the waitress for the bill.
    “What are your plans
for the rest of the afternoon?” he asked her.
    “I don’t have any,
now,” she said. “I really …” Suddenly, like a cloud crossing the sun, tears filmed her eyes.
“I think I’ll just go home.”
    “I’ll see that you
get there safely,” Simon told her. “It sounds as if you’re up against a conspiracy of some kind. We may just have to form a little conspiracy of our own.”
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    On the taxi ride to
Chelsea, the Saint pieced together the chips and
splinters of information that Julie Norcombe reluctantly, fearfully divulged. By the time they reached her brother’s flat he knew all about her coming to London, her brother’s
profession and personality, and everything that
had passed since that evening when Adrian had gone out and not returned. Simon
was playing with those scanty details in his head,
trying not to rush his conclusions, but angling for
different patterns, searching for possibilities that
might be overlooked if he let his attention be come
fixed on one interpretation. Whatever storm was brewing, with Cyril Pargit near or at its centre, gave fascinating
new di mensions to the problem he had set out to explore earlier that same day. Here was something even more intriguing
than an en counter with a mere
unctuous opportunist of the art trade who was technically guilty of
little more than being too imaginative in his
sales talks.
    The Saint helped Julie out
of the taxi and she was surprised when he paid the driver instead of
getting back into the cab him self.
    “I don’t mean to push myself on you,”
he said, still very careful of this jumpy
girl’s apprehensions. “But I don’t think we’ve quite finished our
business yet.”
    His approach to her was hampered by the
knowledge that she had a lot less reason to
trust him than she had Mr Fawkes or the Special Branch officers who had called on the night of her brother’s disappearance. Simon’s biggest trump was
the force of his own sincerity. With
people who deserved no better, or in circumstances that demanded it, he was
capable of the most outrageously convincing pretences, and of feats of
simulation that would have aroused the envy of many a seasoned actor.
But now, when he was being himself, and
totally honest, his persuasiveness was
really overwhelming. It helped to be as handsome as he was, to speak and dress as he did (people always seem to
trust the educated rich), and to have
such an air of self-confidence that you
could not imagine him ever needing to do anything under handed. But at the root of his power to draw
people to him and inspire their trust
was something intangible, an invisible aura which surrounded his body and flowed from his incredible eyes which was
practically irresistible.
    “I don’t know what to
do,” Julie said forlornly, standing out side
the still unopened door of her brother’s flat. “Do you think that the Mr Fawkes I saw was really the man from the art gal lery? I mean, I know he must have been, but it doesn’t seem pos sible. He was there, with his secretary, in his office, with his name on the door, and the man on duty downstairs didn’t think there was anything peculiar …” She suddenly paused.
“Well, he did say that Mr Fawkes was probably
out to lunch, but then he found out he
wasn’t.”
    “It’ll be very easy
to check this out,” Simon said. “May I use your
telephone?”
    Any suspicion or
resistance that remained in Julie’s mind was being rapidly washed away. She
hesitated for only a moment.
    “All right.”
    Simon took the key from
her hand and opened the door. As soon as he followed her
inside he was intrigued by the mixture of North-of-England
bourgeois and artistic individualism that char acterised
the place. It was as if two people lived there and had shared in the
decoration—a very conventional middle-class old maid, and the artist
who had tried to work in his own ideas