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her
between glances at the flame and his kindling cigarette.
    He said
lightly: “I never knew I was so fascinating.”
    “I’m afraid you are. And I expect you’ve
been told all about it before.”
    “You
wouldn’t like me if you knew me.”
    “Why
not?”
    “My glamour would dwindle. I brush my
teeth just like anyone else; and sometimes I burp.”
    “You
haven’t seen me without my make-up.”
    He
inspected her again critically.
    “I
might survive it.”
    “And
I’m lazy and untidy and I have expensive tastes.”
    “I,” he said, “am not a
respectable citizen. I shoot people and I open safes. I’m not
popular. People send me bombs through the mail, and policemen are always
looking for an excuse to arrest me. There isn’t any peace and stability
where I’m around.”
    “I’m not so peaceful and stable
myself,” she said seriously. “But I saw you once, and I’ve
never forgotten you. I’ve read . everything about you—as much as there is to
read. I simply knew I was going to meet you one day, even if it took
years and years. That’s all. Well, now I’ve met you, and you’re stuck with
it.”
    She could say things like that, in a way that
nobody else could have said them and gotten away with it. The Saint
had met most kinds of coquetry and invitation, and he had had to dodge
the anthropophagous pursuit of a few hungry women; but this was none of
those things. She looked him in the face when she said it, and
she said it straight out as if it was the most natural thing to
say because it was just the truth; but there was a little speck of
laughter in each of her eyes at the same time, as if she wondered what he would
think of it and didn’t care very much what he thought.
    He said:
“You’re very frank.”
    “You won’t believe me,” she said,
“but I never told anyone anything like this before in my life. So if
you think I’m com pletely crazy you’re probably right.”
    He blew smoke slowly through his lips and
gazed at her, smiling a little but not very much. It was rather nice to
gaze at her like that, with the subdued lamplight on her bronze head, and
feel that it was the most obvious and inescapable thing for them to be
doing.
    This was absurd, of course; but some absurdities
were more sure than any commonplace probabilities.
    He picked up his glass again. He had to say
something, and he didn’t know what it would be.
    The
door-bell beat him to it.
    The shrill tinny sound ripped shockingly
through his silence, but the lift of his brows was microscopic. And
her answering grimace was just as slight.
    “Excuse
me,” she said.
    She got up and went down the long hall
corridor. He heard the door open, and heard a tuneless contralto voice that
twanged like a flat guitar string.
    “ Hul lo, darling!—oh,
I’m so glad I didn’t get you out of bed. Could I bring the body in for a
second?”
    There was the briefest flash of a pause, and
Avalon said: “Oh, sure.”
    The door
latched, and there was movement.
    The raw clockspring voice said audibly: “I’m not butting in, am I?”
    Avalon said
flatly: “Of course not. Don’t be silly.”
    Then they
were in the room.
    The Saint
unfolded himself off the couch.
    “Mr.
Templar,” Avalon said. “Miss Natello. Simon—Kay.”
    “How do you do,” said
the Saint, for want of a better phrase.
    “Come in, Kay,” Avalon said.
“Sit down and make yourself miserable. Have a drink? You know what this
night life is like.
The evening’s only just started. What goes on in the big city?”
    Her gay babble was just a little bit forced,
and perhaps only the Saint’s ears would have heard it.
    Kay Natello stayed in the entrance, plucking
her orange- painted mouth with the forefinger and thumb of one hand. Under her
thick sprawling eyebrows, her haunted eyes stared at the Saint with
thoughtful intensity.
    “Mr.
Templar,” she said. “Yes, you were at Cookie’s.”
    “I was
there,” said the Saint vaguely, “for a while.”
    “I