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drink in her hand, the warm brown eyes with the flecks of laughter
in them were as straight as he had always seen them.
    “Then,” she said,
“you didn’t just happen to be at Cookie’s tonight by accident.”
    “Maybe
not,” he said.
    “For Heaven’s sake, sit down,” she said. “What is
this—a jitterbug contest? You and Kay ought
to get married. You could have so
much fun.”
    He smiled at her again, and left one final
swallow in his glass.
    “I’ve got to be running along. But I’m
not fooling. I really wish to hell that nobody who had any connection with Cookie had seen me here. And now, to use your own words,
you’re stuck with it.”
    She looked at him with all the superficial
vivacity thrown off,
seriously, from steady footholds of maturity. And like everything else she did that was unexpected, after she had done it
it was impossible to have expected anything else.
    “You
mean it might be—unhealthy?”
    “I
don’t want to sound scary, but … yes.”
    “I’m not scared. But don’t you think you
might tell me why?”
    He shook
his head.
    “I can’t, right now. I’ve told you more
than I should have already, as a matter of fact. But I had to warn you.
Beyond that, the less you know, the safer you’ll be. And I may. be exaggerating.
You can probably brush it off. You recognised me from a picture you
saw once, and you were good and mad, so you threw out that parting crack
just to make trouble. Then I picked you up outside, and you thought I’d
been nice, so you just bought me a drink. That’s the only connection we
have.”
    “Well, so it is. But if this is
something exciting, like the things I fell in love with you for, why can’t
I be in on it?”
    “Because you sing much too nicely, and
the ungodly are awful
unmusical.”
    “Oh,
fish,” she said.
    He grinned,
and finished his drink, and put down the glass.
    “Throw me out, Avalon,” he said.
“In another minute dawn is going to be breaking, and I’m going to
shudder when I hear the crash.”
    And this was it, this was the impossible and
inevitable, and he knew all at once now that it could never have been any other way.
    She said:
“Don’t go.”

2.
    How Dr. Zellermann used the Telephone
    and Simon Templar went visiting.
     
    Simon woke up with the squeal of the
telephone bell splitting his eardrums. He reached out a blind hand for
it and said: “Hullo.”
    “Hullo,” it said. “Mr.
Templar?”
    The voice was quite familiar, although its
inflection was totally different from the way he had heard it last. It
was still excessively precise and perfectionist; but whereas before it had had the
precision of a spray of machine-gun slugs, now it had the mellifluous authority of a mechanical
unit in a production tine.
    “Speaking,” said the Saint.
    “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
    “Oh, no.”
    Simon glanced at his wrist watch. It was just
after twelve.
    “This is Dr. Ernst Zellermann,” said
the telephone.
    “So I gathered,” said the Saint.
“How are you?”
    “Mr. Templar, I owe you an apology. I had
too much to drink last night. I’m usually a good drinker, and I have
no idea why it should have affected me that way. But my behavior was
inexcusable. My language—I would prefer to forget. I de served just what happened to
me. In your place, I would have done exactly
what you did.”
    The voice was rich and crisp with candor. It
was the kind of voice that knew what it was talking about, and
automatically inspired respect. The professional voice. It was a voice
which naturally invited you to bring it your troubles, on which it was naturally comfortable to lean.
    Simon extracted a cigarette from the pack on
the bedside table.
    “I knew you wouldn’t mind,” he said
amiably. “After all, I was only carrying out your own principles.
You did what your instincts told you—and I let my instincts talk to
me.”
    “Exactly. You are perfectly adjusted. I
congratulate you for it. And I can only say I am sorry that