'She's an attractive wench,' he said. 'I like her. She's so innocent and disarming, and as harmless as a hungry shark. The trouble is that if she's not careful she's going to wake up one day and find herself left in a dark alley with her throat cut, and that will be a great pity for anyone with a face and figure like hers.'
'Say, where do ya get dat stuff?' demanded Mr Uniatz loudly.
He sat forward on the edge of his chair, his hamlike hands practically obliterating his half-empty glass, with a deep frown corrugating the negligible clearance between his eyebrows and his hair, and his paleolithically roughcast face chopped into masses of fearsome challenge.
Simon raised his head to stare at him. A criticism like that coming from Mr Uniatz, a man to whom any form of mental exercise was such excruciating torture that he had always been dumb with worship before the Saint's godlike ability to think, had something awe-inspiring about it that numbed its audience. It was nothing like a rabbit turning round to bare its teeth at a greyhound. It was more like a Storm Trooper turning round and asking Hitler why he didn't stop strutting around and get wise to himself. For one reeling instant the Saint wondered if history had been made that night, and the whiskey which had for years been flowing in gargantuan quantities down Hoppy's asbestos throat had at long last soaked through to some hidden sensitive section of his entrails.
Mr Uniatz reddened bashfully under the stares that impinged upon him. He was unaccustomed to being the focus of so much attention. But he clung valiantly to his point.
'It sounds like a pipe dream to me, boss,' he said.
'Let me get this straight,' said the Saint carefully. 'I gather that you don't think that Valerie Woodchester runs any risk of getting her throat cut. Is that the idea ?'
Mr Uniatz looked about him in dazed perplexity. He seemed to think that everyone had gone mad.
'I dunno, boss,' he said, refusing to be sidetracked. 'What I wanna know is where do ya get dat stuff ?'
'What stuff?' asked Peter faintly.
'De compressed whiskey,' said Mr Uniatz.
There was a pregnant silence.
The Saint laid his head slowly back on the cushions and closed his eyes.
'Hoppy,' he said solemnly, 'I love you. When I die, the word 'Uniatz' will be found written on my heart.'
'How about if de goil is selling it, boss?' ventured Mr Uniatz, tiptoeing into the dizzy realms of Theory. 'Maybe she's in de racket, too, woikin' for de chemical factory where dey make it.'
Simon passed him the whiskey bottle.
'Maybe she is, Hoppy,' he said. 'It's an idea, anyway. Give yourself some more nourishment while we think it over.'
'Didn't you get anything useful out of her?' asked Patricia.
'She held out on me,' said the Saint ruefully. 'I did my best, but I might have saved myself the trouble. Amazing as it may seem, she wouldn't confide in me. The secrets of her girlish heart are still the secrets of her girlish heart so far as I'm concerned.'
Peter clicked his tongue.
'You've met her four times now, and she hasn't confided in you,' he said in accents of distress. 'You must be losing your touch. They don't usually hold out so long.'
'What do you mean by 'they'?' demanded the Saint unblushingly.
