The Saint had to laugh.
“And I’m sorry I can’t make you a story, after you’ve tried so hard to feed me the ingredients. But things don’t happen to me that way.”
He was wrong, of course — any time he made a categorical statement like that, his peculiar Fate usually took it as a personal challenge and set out to make a liar of him.
An hour later, after pancakes and coffee and Benedictine, the headwaiter who was bowing them out deftly slipped a folded piece of paper into the Saint’s hand while seeming to almost ignore him in the exchange of compliments and banalities with the important local patron. But Simon felt the warning pressure that went with this professional legerdemain and slid the note into his pocket without a visible flicker of attention.
He managed to read it under the street lighting, with the most unostentatious casualness, while waiting for their car at the parking lot, as if it had been a list of Things To Do In Town. In a vigorous sprawling hand, it said:
If you feel like a quiet nightcap, call me any time after eleven — Magnolia 7-5089. The name is Elise Ashville.
“Where would you like me to drop you off?” Stern asked cagily. “I’m afraid I have an important meeting first thing in the morning, but—”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want to be shown the Vieux Carré,” said the Saint. “As a matter of fact, I took the Bourbon Street promenade last night, for old times’ sake. Maybe it’s old age creeping up on me, but the honky-tonks seem to get honkier and tonkier every year. Let’s have a quiet digestive dram at my hotel and call it a day.”
Thus a little time passed quickly and painlessly, and a few minutes after eleven he was able to dial a pay phone in the lobby.
The voice that answered the ring had none of the charm of the traditional Southern servitor as it snapped: “Mrs Ashville’s residence. Who’s calling?”
“The Count of Cristamonte,” Simon said, with the accent.
“Hold on.”
Then after a moment it was the voice he had been expecting, electrically rich with suggestive overtones.
“Please excuse my maid’s tone of voice. I think she thinks she’s working too late, or something. Are you ready for that nightcap?”
“I would like to see you again.”
“Ask any taxi driver for the Elysée Apartments. The new building. I had it named for me. You work the elevator yourself. On top of all the floor buttons there’s one small green button with no number. That’s my penthouse. Will you be long?”
“No longer than this taxi will take,” he said.
One reason why Simon Templar’s nervous system had survived his extraordinary life with so little damage by strain and fraying was that he had an amazing gift of closing his mind to unprofitable speculation. When there was obviously nothing to be gained by trying to foreguess a situation that would soon supply its own answers, he was able to simply switch off the futile circuit and wait with only philosophical anticipation for the future to unroll itself. He saved his prophetic energy for the occasions when life and death might depend on how many moves he could stay ahead of the game, but he felt reasonably sure that this was not that kind of game.
He was even more sure when she unlocked the inside door at which the automatic elevator stopped in obedience to the small green button and let him step out into a room that could only have been designed by an interior decorator who had studied his subject by watching old movies on television. It cried aloud for a sinuous slumber-eyed siren in a long clinging robe, possibly fondling a tame ocelot. Elise Ashville was too palpably charged with corpuscles and vitamins for that rôle, and she had not even conceded to the diaphanous négligée which any writer of a certain modern school would have considered a formal necessity for such an occasion, but the suggestion of untrammeled nakedness under the demurely neck-high and ankle-deep housecoat she had changed into was no less positive and even more effective. And her approach had a refreshing time-saving candor.
“I’m glad you weren’t too tied up with Mr Stern, since you aren’t going to be here long.”
“I think he was rather relieved that he didn’t have to take me on a tour of the strip-tease joints.” The Saint held his accent down to an intriguing cosmopolitan minimum, just enough to add spice to the personality he was projecting. “And your Marchese?”
“I told him I had a terrible headache.”
She led the way to a long, wide, deep, and unlimitedly functional couch, flanked by a coffee table burdened with bottles of almost anything except coffee, together with glasses and an ice bucket.
“Then the only one who must be unhappy is your maid,” he remarked. “She sounded quite annoyed about answering the phone.”
“She was sore because I took her away from her TV set to give me a rubdown and fix me a bath and a few things like that, and then I made her wait up until you called — that was in case anyone else called first, she could say I was out. So she’ll be fired as soon as she’s fixed my breakfast. I can’t stand servants who think they ought to have union hours and rules. If a servant isn’t a servant, what are you paying for? That’s the European angle, isn’t it?”
“Well, it was like that once. But today—”
“I’m going to ask the employment agency for a good hungry refugee. I couldn’t do worse than with what I’ve been getting. But I won’t bore you any more with that. Do you mind fixing your own nightcap?”
“I thought that was a figure of speech.”
She met the intentional challenge of his gently insolent gaze without the flicker of one mascara’d eyelash.
“I suppose in Europe no lady would have sent you a note like mine?”
“No, it could happen. But a gentleman would only take it as a most generous compliment.”
“You’ve got a nice line, darling, but you don’t have to strain it. Mr Stern must have told you a little about me. I expect you’re used to getting a lot of breaks because of your title. I get them because I can pay for anything I want. And I couldn’t let you get away, because I think you’re the most exciting-looking man I’ve ever seen.”
“Then you would not misunderstand my impatience to kiss the most exciting woman I have seen in America?”
It was a purely Arabian Nights kind of episode that the Saint would never have dared to relate to anyone who he did not already know to be convinced that in this amazing world anything can happen, but this subtracted nothing from his enjoyment of it, since he was not in the habit of telling that kind of story.
Churlish as it may seem to some readers, however, he did not wake up the next morning completely bemused by exquisite if implausible memories. In fact, after reviewing everything through a third cup of breakfast coffee, he found nothing more incredible than one recklessly premature pontification of his own. To retrieve that one he had to brazen out an unexpected call at a local newspaper office.
“I thought you decided last night that there was no story in it for you,” Stern said, not without malice. “What happened to change your mind?”
“Nothing,” Simon replied mendaciously, “except that I began to wonder if you’d think I just couldn’t be bothered. Would you care to get me those other details that you didn’t know last night?”
“Let’s go and talk to the editor.”
The editor was a composed and genial man who puffed a pipe in a relaxed manner that would have horrified any well-trained casting director. He said, “No, I haven’t sent anyone to talk to this sister. Since Ashville himself was so definite about not wanting the story printed, I decided to drop it. After all, if his pride is all he’s got left, and it means that much to him, we don’t have to strip him of that last shred of dignity to get out an interesting edition.”