She was a thin, bony, tight-lipped woman with a face like a well-bred horse, and Simon could construct the rest of her character without an interview. There was no need even to look at her for long, and as a matter of fact, he didn’t.
What kept his head turned for quite a few seconds more than identification called for was Lady Offchurch’s companion — a girl half her age, with golden hair and gray eyes and a face that must have launched a thousand clichés.
“Well?” Lieutenant Wendel’s voice intruded harshly, and Simon turned back. “Beautiful,” he said.
“Yeah,” Wendel said. “For a hundred grand, they should be.”
“Oh, the pearls,” Simon said innocently. “I didn’t notice. I was talking about her daughter.”
Wendel squinted past him.
“She doesn’t have a daughter. I guess that’s just a friend. Maybe came with her from Hollywood — she’s pretty enough.” His eyes snapped back to Simon with a scowl. “Now quit tryin’ to head me off again. When I read this Offchurch was in town, I naturally start wondering if any big operators have checked in about the same time. I’m a lazy guy, see, and it’s a lot easier to stop something happening than try to catch a crook after he’s done it... And the first register I go through, I see your name.”
“Which proves I must be up to something, because if I wasn’t planning a Saint job I’d obviously use an alias.”
“It wouldn’t be out of line with the kind of nerve I hear you’ve got.”
“Thank you.”
“So I’m tellin’ you. I’m having Lady Offchurch watched twenty-four hours a day, and if my men ever see you hanging around they’ll throw you in the can. And if those pearls ever show up missing, whether anybody saw you or not, you better be ready with all the answers.”
Simon Templar smiled, and it was like the kindling of a light in his keen, dark, reckless face. His blue eyes danced with an audacity that only belonged with cloaks and swords.
“Now you’re really making it sound interesting.”
Wendel’s face reddened.
“Yeah? Well, I’m warning you.”
“You’re tempting me. I wish policemen wouldn’t keep doing that.” Simon beckoned a waiter. “Coffee — and how about some crêpes Suzette?”
The detective bunched his napkin on the table.
“No, thank you. Let me have my check — separately.”
“But I invited you.”
“I can take care of myself, Saint. I hope you can too. Just don’t forget, you had your warning.”
“I won’t forget,” said the Saint softly.
He lighted a cigarette after the police officer had gone, and thoughtfully stirred sugar into his coffee.
He was not affronted by Wendel’s ungraciousness — that sort of reaction was almost conventional, and he hadn’t exactly exerted himself to avoid it. But it was a pity, he thought, that so many policemen in their most earnest efforts to avert trouble were prone to throw down challenges which no self-respecting picaroon could ignore. Because it happened to be perfectly true that the Saint had entered New Orleans without a single design upon Lady Offchurch or her pearls, and if it was inept of the law to draw his attention to them, it was even more tactless to combine the reminder with what virtually amounted to a dare.
Even so (the Saint assured himself), his fundamental strength and nobility of character might still have been able to resist the provocation if Destiny hadn’t thrown in the girl with the golden hair...
He didn’t look at her again until Lady Offchurch passed his table, on her way to the special conveniences of the restaurant, and then he turned again and met the gray eyes squarely and timelessly.
The girl looked back at him, and her face was as smooth and translucent as the maharajah’s pearls, and as brilliantly expressionless.
Then she lowered her eyes to a book of matches in front of her, and wrote inside the cover with a pencil from her bag.
The Saint’s gaze left her again, and didn’t even return when a passing waiter placed a match booklet somewhat ostentatiously in front of him.
He opened the cover and read:
27 Bienville Apts.
St Ann Street
at 10:30
Lady Offchurch was returning to her table. Simon Templar paid his check, put the matches in his pocket, and strolled out to pass the time at the Absinthe House.
This was the way things happened to him, and he couldn’t fight against fate.
So after a while he was strolling down St Ann Street, until he found the Bienville. He went through an archway into a cobble-stoned courtyard, and there even more than in the narrow streets of the Vieux Carré it was like dropping back into another century, where cloaks and swords had a place. Around him, like a stage setting, was a chiaroscuro of dim lights and magnolia and wrought-iron balconies that seemed to have been planned for romantic and slightly illicit assignations, and he could make no complaint about the appropriateness of his invitation.
He found an outside stairway that led up to a door beside which a lantern hung over the number 27, and she opened the door before he touched the knocker.
He couldn’t help the trace of mockery in his bow as he said, “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” she said calmly, and walked back across the living room. The front door opened straight into it. There were glasses and bottles on a sideboard in the dining alcove across the room. As she went there she said, “What would you like to drink?”
“Brandy, I think, for this occasion,” he said.
She brought it to him in a tulip glass, and he sniffed and sipped analytically.
“Robin, isn’t it?” he remarked. “I remember — you had a natural taste.” His eyes ran up and down her slender shape with the same candid analysis. “I guess there’s only one thing you’ve changed. In Montreal, you were pretending to be Judith Northwade. What name are you using here?”
“Jeannine Roger. It happens to be my own.”
“A good name, anyway. Does it also belong to the last man I saw you with?”
For an instant she was almost puzzled.
“Oh, him. My God, no.”
“Then he isn’t lurking in the next room, waiting to cut loose with a sawed-off shotgun.”
“I haven’t seen him for months, and I couldn’t care less if it was years.”
Simon tasted his brandy again, even more carefully.
“Then — are you relying on some subtle Oriental poison, straight from the pharmacopoeia of Sherlock Holmes?”
“No.”
“This gets even more interesting. In Montreal—”
“In Montreal, I tried to pull a fast one on you.”
“To be exact, you set me up to pull a job for you, and I was damn nearly the sucker who fell for it.”
“Only instead of that you made a sucker out of me.”
“And now all of a sudden I’m forgiven?”
She shrugged.
“How can I squawk? I started the double-cross, so how can I kick if it backfired? So now we’re even.”
Simon sat on the arm of a chair.
“This is almost fascinating,” he said. “So you sent me that invitation so we could kiss again and be friends?”
A faint flush touched her cheekbones.
“When you saw me with Lady Offchurch, I knew I’d have to deal with you sooner or later. Why kid myself? So I thought I’d get it over with.”
“You thought I was after the same boodle.”
“If you weren’t before, you would be now.”
“Well, what’s the proposition?”
“Why don’t we really team up this time?”
Simon put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match.
“It’s a nice idea,” he said. “However, you may be overlooking something. How do you see the split?”
“Fifty-fifty, of course.”
“That’s the trouble.”