The girl stamped her foot.

"You can be funny at breakfast to-morrow, if you live to eat it," she shot back. "For God's sake-- can't you see what danger you're in?"

"Now I come to think of it," murmured the Saint, "you must have a name, too."

"Tregarth's my name," she told him impatiently.

"It must have been your father's," said the Saint, with conviction. "Tell me--what else do the family call you to distinguish you from him?"

"Betty Tregarth.

Simon held out his hand.

"Thanks, Betty," he said seriously. "You're rather a decent kid. I'm sorry you're mixed up in this bunch of bums.''

"I'm not!" she began hotly, and then suddenly fell silent, her face going white, for she realized how impossible it would be to tell him the true circumstances.

And the realization cut her like a knife, for Simon Templar was smiling at her in a particularly nice way; and she knew at once that if there was one man in the whole world whom she might have trusted with such a story as hers, it was the smiling young man with the hell-for-leather blue eyes who stood before her arrayed in green pajamas and a staggering silk dressing gown that would have made Joseph's coat look like a suit of deep mourning. And by the cussedness of Fate it had had to so happen that he was also one of the few men in the world in whom she could not possibly confide. She felt hot tears stinging her eyelids--tears that she longed to shed, and could not.

"Shake, Betty," said the Saint gently, and she took his hand.

He looked down at her, still smiling in that particularly nice way.

"Thanks for coming," he said. "But it's ho use, though--I'm staying here as long as the job takes. If you'll adopt me as a sort of honorary uncle and take my advice, you'll get out of this as quick as you can. Pack your bag to-night, and hike for the station first thing to-morrow morning. That's a straight tip. And if you do decide to get out, and the other tumours cut up queer, just blow me the wink and I'll see you through. That's a promise."