His manner was without concern or eagerness—it struck exactly the right note of harmless nonchalance. If the Saint had been as innocent as he looked he could have done it no better; and the doorkeeper peered up and down the street and unlatched the door.
Simon went through and hooked his hat on a peg. Beyond the tiny hall was a spacious bar which seemed to occupy the remainder of the front part of the building. The tables were fairly well filled with young-old men of the smoothly blue-chinned type, tailored into the tight-fitting kind of coat which displays to such advantage the bulges of muscle on the biceps and the upper back. Their faces, as they glanced up in automatic silence at the Saint's entrance, had a uniform air of frozen impassivity, particularly about the eyes, like fish that have been in cold storage for many years. Scattered among their company was a sprinkling of the amply curved pudding-faced blondes who may be recognized anywhere as belonging to the genus known as 'gangsters' molls'—it is a curious fact that few of the men who shoot their way through amazing wealth to sophistication in almost all their appetites ever acquire a sophisticated taste in femininity.
Simon gave the occupants no more than a casual first glance, absorbing the general background in one broad survey. He walked across to the bar and hitched himself onto a high stool. One of the white-coated bartenders set up a glass of ice water and waited.
'Make it a rye highball,' said the Saint
By the time the drink had been prepared the mutter of conversation in the room had resumed its normal pitch. Simon took a sip from his glass and stopped the bartender before he could move away.
'Just a minute,' said the Saint. 'What's your name?'
The man had an oval, olive-hued, expressionless face, with beautifully lashed brown eyes and glossily waved black hair that made his age difficult to determine.
'My name is Toni,' he stated.
'Congratulations,' said the Saint. 'My name is Simon. From Detroit.'
The man nodded unemotionally, with his soft dark eyes fixed on the Saint's face.
'From Detroit,' he repeated, as if memorizing a message.
'They call me Aces Simon,' said the Saint evenly. The bartender's unwrinkled face responded as much as a wooden image might have done. 'I'm told there are some players in this city who know what big money looks like.'
'What do you want?'
'I thought I might get a game somewhere.' Simon's blue gaze held the bartender's as steadily as the other was watching him. 'I want to play with Morrie Ualino.'
The man wiped his cloth slowly across the bar, drying off invisible specks of moisture.
'I don't know anything. I have to ask the boss.'
He turned and went through a curtain at the back of the bar; and while he was gone Simon finished his drink. The bluff and the gamble went on. If anything went wrong at this stage it would be highly unfortunate—what might happen later on was another matter. But the Saint's nerves were like ice. After some minutes the man came back.
'Morrie Ualino don't play tonight. Papulos is playing. You want a game?'
Simon did not move a muscle. Through Papulos the trail went to Ualino, and he had never expected to get near Ualino in the first jump. But if Ualino were not playing that night— if he were engaged elsewhere—it was an added chance that the radio message which Fernack had received might supply a reason. The azure steel came and went in the Saint's eyes, but all the bartender saw was a disappointed shrug.
'I didn't come here to cut for pennies. Who is this guy Papulos?'
Toni's soft brown eyes held an imperceptible glint of contemptuous humour.
'If you want to play big, I think he will give you all you want. Afterwards you can meet Ualino. You want to go?'
