Brighter Buccaneer by Leslie Charteris Page B

biting her lip. “Thank you-thank you so much —”
    “Il n’y a pas de quoi, madame” said the man happily. “I see it fall and I run after you, but always you’re too quick. Now it’s all right. I am content. Madame, you permit me to say you are a brave woman? I also saw everysing. Zat Baron —”
    All at once the girl hid her face in her hands.
    “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said chokingly. “You’re all so sweet … Oh, my God! If only I could kill him! He deserves to be killed. He deserves to lose his beastly bracelet. I’d steal it myself —”
    “Ah, but then you would be in prison, madame —”
    “Oh, it’d be easy enough. It’s on the ground floor.-you’d only have to break open the desk. He doesn’t believe in burglar-alarms. He’s so sure of himself. But I’d show him. I’d make him pay!”
    She turned away to the corner and sobbed hysterically.
    Simon glanced at the little Frenchman.
    “Elle se trouvera mieux chez elle,” he said; and the other nodded sympathetically and closed the door.
    The taxi drew away in a wedge of traffic and turned up Regent Street. Simon sat back in his corner and let the girl have her cry. It was the best possible thing for her; and he could have said nothing helpful.
    They had a practically clear run through to St. John’s Wood; and the girl recovered a little as they neared their destination. She wiped her eyes and took out a microscopic powder puff, with the unalterable vanity of women.
    “You must think I’m a fool,” she said, as the taxi slowed up. “Perhaps I am. But no one else can understand.”
    “I don’t mind,” said the Saint.
    The cab stopped, and he leaned across her to open the door. Her face was within two inches of his, and the Saint required all adventures to be complete. In his philosophy, knight-errantry had its own time-honoured rewards.
    His lips touched hers unexpectedly; and then in a flash, with a soft laugh, he was out of the taxi. She walked past him and went up the steps of the house without looking back.
    Simon rode back jubilantly to the Mayfair, and found his lady and Peter Quentin patiently ordering more coffee. The Baron had already left.
    “I saw you leaving with the blonde Venus,” said Peter enviously. “How on earth did you work it?”
    “Is this a new romance?” smiled Patricia.
    “You want to be careful of these Barons,” said Peter. “Next thing you know, you’ll have a couple of his pals clicking their heels at you and inviting you to meet him in Hyde Park at dawn.”
    The Saint calmly annexed Peter Quentin’s liqueur and tilted his chair backwards. Over the rim of his glass he exchanged bows with the chivalrous Frenchman at the adjoining table, who was paying his bill and preparing to leave; and then he surveyed the other two with a lazily reckless glint in his eye that could have only one meaning.
    “Let’s, go home,” he said.
    They sauntered down Piccadilly to the block where the Saint’s flat was situated; and there the Saint doffed his hat with a flourish, and kissed Patricia’s hand.
    “Lady, be good. Peter and I have a date to watch the moon rising over the Warrington waterworks.”
    In the same silence two immaculately-dressed young men sauntered on to the garage where the Saint kept his car. Nothing was said until one of them was at the wheel, with the other beside him, and the great silver Hirondel was humming smoothly past Hyde Park Corner. Then the fair-haired one spoke.
    “Campden Hill, I suppose?”
    “You said it,” murmured the Saint. “Baron von Dortvenn has asked for it once too often.”
    He drove past the house for which Baron von Dortvenn had exchanged the schloss that was doubtless his more natural background. It was a gaunt Victorian edifice, standing apart from the adjacent houses in what for London was an unusually large garden, surrounded by a six-foot brick wall topped by iron spikes. As far as the Saint could see, it was in darkness; but he was not