disgraceful last night-- wasn't it, Allen?'
Uttershaw tried to achieve some sort of pleasant and neutral vagueness; but the effort was hardly necessary, for Mrs Ourley had only paused for a swift breath.
'I'd thought that perhaps later we might get in a rumba or two with the Capehart--I've got simply stacks and stacks of records--but as it was you couldn't even stay for dinner. And after I'd told Frankfurter--he's our butler, and a perfect jewel of a butler if I ever saw one, and of course I've seen so many. But the way Milton acted. Well, really, it was a complete surprise to me. And after you'd taken the time and trouble to come all the way out to Oyster Bay and use up your gas and tires and everything to try and help him out of that terrible iridium mess. We had a dreadful spat about it last night, and I told him he was either too rude to live or as good as a traitor; and he said-- well, you heard how he talks when he's angry, and I can't bring myself to repeat it. But I was so hoping I'd find you here so that I could tell you it wasn't my fault.'
'I never thought it was,' said the Saint reassuringly, and was fortunately rescued from further contortions by the intrusion of a bellboy in search of Uttershaw for a telephone call.
'Excuse me,' Uttershaw said, with a tinge of humorous malice, and went gracefully away.
Mrs Ourley watched him go with a kind of middle-aged las-civiousness, dislocated her hat again as she turned back to the table, balanced it once more with the same nonchalant agility, and said: 'Isn't he the most charming man?'
'A nice character,' said the Saint.
'And he's a divine dancer. And always so wonderfully tactful. I don't know what I'd have done if he hadn't been there last night. Milton is simply impossible when he gets into one of his moods. It's a good thing they never last more than a few weeks. But really, Simon--I hope you don't mind me calling you Simon, but I'm beginning to feel as if I'd known you for years--really, you must come out to dinner with us one night. I've got a simply wonderful cook--she makes pics that literally melt in your mouth, I mean literally melt.'
' 'Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair',' murmured the Saint, and immediately decided that this quotation mechanism was something that had to be taken firmly in hand.
'What? . . . Oh, you silly boy! Of course I didn't mean anything like that. But my cook really is a treasure.'
'You look like a living tribute to her genius,' said the Saint with a straight face; and Mrs Ourley beamed.
'You say the sweetest things. But I was telling you about Milton. I know I shouldn't talk about my own husband, but he's ridiculously jealous. He . . .'
Simon listened with the utmost interest to her description of some of the unreasonableness of Mr Milton Ourley, and while he listened he was studying the face of the woman across the table.
He had to admit that the ideas which Uttershaw had planted were astonishingly fertile. There was a rapacious ruthlessness below the surface of gabbling imbecility which Titania Ourley displayed to the public which could make a lot of surprising pictures of her plausible. Without knowing anything else about her, he knew that she would make a dangerous enemy; and he knew that the effusive gush which enveloped her like her appalling perfume could provide a lot of study for a post-graduate student of camouflage.
The tale of Milton Ourley's derelictions went on and on while the Saint thought about it. He nodded regularly, and made encouraging noises in the right places, and managed to look quite disappointed when the recital was interrupted by the return of Allen Uttershaw.
'Do sit down,' said Mrs Ourley hospitably. 'I was just telling Simon--I mean Mr Templar--I mean Simon----'
'I'm sorry,' Uttershaw said suavely. 'I'm still a working man, you know. That call was from my office, and I'm afraid some other working men are getting impatient.'
'You're a meanie!'
Mrs Ourley made a moue. This was undoubtedly something she had read about in a magazine. In her interpretation, it looked a little as if she had just detected the presence of a dead rat in the room.
'Forgive me,' Uttershaw said. 'It isn't because I want to 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.' He turned to Simon, and held out his hand with a smile that contained a hint of wicked amusement which had nothing to do with the ordinary urbanities. 'I'm glad to leave you in such good company.' He glanced at Mrs Ourley again. 'By the way, where is Milton?'
'He's down the street at the Harvard Club, having lunch with some dreary man from Washington--at least, that's what he said he was doing,' she added darkly. 'Lately, I've had my suspicions as to what Milton is doing when he tells me he's doing something else, if you know what I mean. Why?'
'I might want to get in touch with him this afternoon,' Uttershaw said casually, but his eyes returned rather conspiratorially to the Saint as he was finishing the sentence. 'Well--I enjoyed our talk. Let's meet again soon.'
'Very soon,' Simon promised.
He sat down again as Uttershaw sauntered out, and saw that Mrs Ourley was following this departure with a tinge of specu-lation that had not been in her oestrous gaze before.
'Now, why do you suppose he might want to find Milton?' she asked.
She was talking more to herself than to him, but the eyes that she swung back towards him were no longer vacant.
'And he was having lunch with you. ... Is it something about the iridium?' she asked sharply.
Anyone could have noticed the change in her tone, the steel showing through the whipped cream, the spikes under the feathers.
Simon reached for his coffee and took a sip.
'That's rather obvious, isn't it?' he said calmly. 'You know that I'm gunning for the black market. You know that Alien Uttershaw was about the biggest dealer in iridium before the shortage. So I guess the subject may have been just accidentally mentioned.'
Her pale and slightly protruding eyes became almost metallic. The thickly rouged lips thinned out, and the puffy features had congealed under the lacquered skin.
'What did he tell you?' she demanded.
The Saint didn't answer. He merely slanted his eyebrows into line of bland and blunt inquiry that was exactly as eloquent as speech. Without articulating a syllable, it wanted to know just what the hell business of Titania Ourley's it was what Allen Uttershaw had told him; and she caught the precise meaning of it like a fighter walking into a straight left. You could almost see the impact of it connecting with one of the receding tiers of chins that sagged from beneath that suddenly hard mouth.
She recovered with a celerity that earned his reluctant admiration. When he gave her that cynical challenge of the eyebrows she had been within a hair's breadth of menace and domineering; now, in a moment, she was leaning back again and delving into an enormous handbag to excavate a cigarette holder that looked like a jeweled pipe from a cathedral organ, and she was just as vapid as she had ever been.
'I'm afraid I'm much too inquisitive,' she prattled. 'I keep forgetting that you're the Saint, and anything people tell you is sacred. After all, I did make you my own father confessor, didn't I? ... But I admit I am curious.' She bent forward again so that a comber of hothouse odors practically splashed into the Saint's nostrils. 'Not that I ever gossip about anybody--Heaven knows that my worst enemies can't say that about me! But to tell you the truth, I've often wondered about Mr Uttershaw.'
9 Simon Templar replenished his cup with the last dribble from his rationed coffee-pot, and reflected that life could certainly open up a wondrous variety of perspectives when sundry citizens began to look sideways at one another. It was a sizable item in the mental overhead which he would have preferred to leave out of his budget; but he compromised by showing no visible reaction at all and letting his mind remain passive and receptive.
Titania Ourley, who was apparently waiting for shocked amazement to spread over his features, seemed moderately disappointed when his face remained unmoved but expectant. Nevertheless, she surged closer over the table, buffeting him with another tidal wave of exotic stenches which he decided must have been concocted in a cocktail shaker.
'I wouldn't be at all surprised,' she said portentously, 'if somebody investigated Allen Uttershaw one of these days and found out a lot of funny things. Oh, I know he's a marvelous dancer, and he's always so perfectly perfect, if you know what I mean, but haven't you noticed that there's something secret about him? I hate to say it when he isn't here to defend himself, but do you know, sometimes I think he isn't quite normal!'
