The Saint Sees It Through

She stepped down off the platform, to be hand-shaken and  slapped on the back by a surge of admirers as the lights went up again.

Patrick Hogan climbed to his feet, pushing the table out and almost upsetting it in his eagerness. He cupped his hands to his mouth and split the general hubbub with a stentorian shout.

'Hey, Cookie.'

His coat was rucked up to his hips from the way he had been sitting, and as he lurched there his right hip pocket was only a few inches from Simon's face. Quite calmly and almost mechanically the Saint's eyes traced the outlines of the object that bulged in the pocket under the rough cloth—even before he moved to catch a blue-black gleam of metal down in the slight gape of the opening.

Then he lighted a cigarette with extreme thoughtfulness, digesting the new and uncontrovertible fact that Patrick Hogan, that simple spontaneous child of nature, was painting the town with a roscoe in his pants.

3

Cookie sat down with them, and Hogan said: 'This is me friend Tom Simons, a foine sailor an' an old goat with the gals. We were drunk together in Murmansk-—or I was drunk any­way.'

'How do you do, Tom,' Cookie said.

'Mustn't grumble,' said the Saint. ' 'Ow's yerself ?'

'Tired. And I've still got two shows to do at my own place.'

'I certainly did enjoy 'earing yer sing, ma'm.'

'This your first visit?'

'Yus, ma'm.'

'Call me Cookie. Everyone does.'

'Yus, ma'm.'

'I bet it wont' be his last,' Hogan said. 'Eh, Tom?'

'Not arf it won't,' said the Saint. 'If you'll 'ave me. But I dunno as I'll 'ave a lot more charnces on this trip.'

Cookie took out a pack of cigarettes, offered them, and lit one for herself. She looked at the Saint again.

'Aren't you staying long?' she asked conversationally.

'Naow. Back on board by supper-time on Tuesday, them's the orders—an' we only drops the 'ook yesterdye. Be a s'ilor an' see the world—I don't think.'

'That's too bad.'

'Aow, it's orl in the dye's work, ma'm. But I ses ter meself, I'm goin' ter see New York while I got the charnce, by crikey.'

'Where are you heading for next?'

'Through the canal an' strite to Shanghai. Then back from there to Frisco. Then­——'

'Say, Cookie,' interrupted Hogan brazenly, 'how's about a drop of real liquor for a couple o' good friends who've dried their throats to a cinder with cheerin' for ye?'

She took a deep man-sized drag at her cigarette, flicked ash from it on to the table, and glanced at the Saint again with expressionless and impersonal calculation.

'I might find you a drop,' she said.

She stood up and started away; and Patrick Hogan nudged the Saint with one of his broad disarming winks as they fol­lowed her.

'What did I tell ye, Tom?'

'Cor,' said the Saint appreciatively, 'you ain't arf a one.' They went through a door at the side of the service bar, which took them into a kitchen that might once have been bustling and redolent with the concoction of rare dishes for the delectation of gourmets. Now it looked bare and drab and forlorn. There was no one there. A centre table was piled with loaves of bread and stacks of sliced ham and cheese, and littered with crumbs and scraps. Cases of coke and pop were pyra­mided in one corner. The only thing on the stove was an enormous steaming coffee pot; and a mass of dirty cups and plates raised sections of their anatomy, like vestiges of a sunken armada, out of the lake of greasy water in the sink.

Cookie led the way into another room that opened off the kitchen. It was so tiny that it must once have seen duty as a store room. Now it barely had space for a couple of plain chairs, a wastebasket, a battered filing cabinet, and a scarred desk scattered with bills and papers. Kay Natello sat at the desk, in front of an antique typewriter, pecking out an address on an envelope with two clawlike fingers.

'Hullo, Kay,' Hogan said familiarly. 'An' how's me swate­heart tonight?'

'We're just going to have a quick one,' Cookie said. 'Be a darling and find us some glasses, Kay, will you?'

Kay Natello got up and went out into the kitchen, and Cookie opened a drawer of the desk and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch. Natello came back with four wet glasses and put them on the desk.

'This is Tom Simons—Kay Natello,' Cookie said, 'Tom's only just got in, and he's sailing again on Tuesday.'

'Too bad,' said Natello.

'We all 'ave ter work, Miss,' Simon said modestly. 'At least we got plenty o' grub an' a nice clean bed ter sleep in, as long as it don't sink under us.'

Cookie finished pouring four powerful slugs, and picked up one of them.

'Well, boys,' she said. 'Down the hatch.'

The drinks duly went down the hatch.

'You were sailing soon, too, weren't you, Pat?' asked Natello.

'Next week. Off to South Africa, India, Singapore, and back the same way.'

'We'll miss you,' said Cookie. 'What about you, Tom— are you going to England?'

'Shanghai,' said the Saint, wiping his droopy moustache. 'Through the canal. An' back to Frisco.'

Cookie poured herself another drink, and downed it at one gulp like a dose of medicine. Perhaps that was what it was for her.

'I've got to leave you,' she announced. 'Got my next show to do.'

She helped herself to another small jolt, as an afterthought, just in case she had made a mistake and cheated herself on the last one. The effect on her was not even noticeable. Her small piggy eyes summarised the Saint with the quick covert shrewd­ness of an adept Fiftysecond-Street head waiter taking the measure of a new customer. She said with perfectly timed spontaneity: 'Look, why don't you boys come over to the Cellar when you get through here? On the house.'

Hogan thumped her heartily on the back without even jar­ring her.

'Darlin', what did ye think we were waitin' for? Sure, we'll be there shoutin' for ye. Won't we, Tom?'

'Crikey,' said the Saint, with a wistful break in his voice. 'You ain't arf giving us a time, ma'm. I mean, Cookie.'

'That's fine,' Cookie said. 'Then I'll be expecting you. Kay, you take care of them and bring them along. See you all later.'

She gathered her foundation around her, gave a last hesitant glance at the Scotch bottle, and made a resolute exit like a hip­popotamus taking off to answer the call of Spring.

Kay Natello took care of them.

Simon didn't keep very close track of the caretaking, but the general trend of it was quite simple. After the Scotch was fin­ished and they left the canteen, it involved stopping at a great many bars on the way and having a drink or two in each of them. Hogan acquired more blarney and boisterousness as it went on: he said that Kay was his girl, and an Irishman's girl was his castle, or something that sounded like that. He beam­ingly offered to pulverize various persons whom he suspected of dissenting from his opinions about Oliver Cromwell, Michael Collins, De Valera, and Kay Natello. Simon Templar did his best to keep in time with the mood, and surreptitiously drib­bled as many drinks as he could into the nearest cuspidor. Through it all, Kay Natello only became more stringy and more removed. She responded to Pat Hogan's elephantine flirta­tions when she remembered to; in between, she was more like a YWCA chaperone trying to keep up with the girls. Simon was quite relieved that she didn't at any point offer to break into significant vers libres. . . . But it still seemed to take a long time to reach Cookie's Cellar.

Once they were there, however, it was a repetition of the night before from another viewpoint. This time, the