said Patricia Holm soberly, “you’ll be getting into trouble again soon.” Simon Templar grinned, and opened another bottle of beer. He poured it out with a steady hand, unshaken by the future predicted for him. “You may be right, darling,” he admitted. “Trouble is one of the things that sort of happen to me, like other people have colds.” “I’ve often heard you complaining about it,” said the girl sceptically. The Saint shook his head. “You wrong me,” he said. “Posterity will know me as a maligned, misunderstood, ill-used victim of a cruel fate. I have tried to be good. Instinctive righteousness glows from me like an inward light. But nobody gives it a chance. What do you suggest?” “You might go into business.” “I know. Something safe and respectable, like manufacturing woollen combinations for elderly ladies and lorgnettes. We might throw in a pair of lorgnettes with every suit. You could knit them, and I’d do the fitting—the fitting of the lorgnettes, of course.”
