The Saint Sees It Through Read Online Free PDF Page A

light wolf coat. She got into the cab as he reached
the street level; and before the doorman could close the door Simon took two
steps across the pavement, ducked under the man’s startled nose, and sat
down beside her.
    He held
out a quarter, and the door closed.
    She gazed
at him in silence.
    He gazed
at her, smiling.
    “Good morning,” she said.
“This is cosy.”                 
    “I thought I might buy you a drink
somewhere,” he said, “and wash the taste of that dump out of
our mouths.”
    “Thanks,” she said. “But I’ve
had all I can stand of creep joints for one night.”
    “Then
may I see you home?”
    Her candid
eyes considered him for a bare moment.
    “Why
not?”
    She gave the driver an address
on Sutton Place South.        
    “Do you make all that money?” Simon
asked interestedly, as
they moved off.
    “The place I’ve got isn’t so expensive. And I work pretty regularly. At least,” she added, “I used
to.”
    “I hope I didn’t louse everything up for you.”
    “Oh, no. I’ll get something else. I was
due for a change anyway.
I couldn’t have taken much more of Cookie without going completely nuts. And I
can’t think of any happier finale than
tonight.”
    Simon stretched out to rest his heels on the
folding seat opposite him, and drew another eighth of an inch off his cigarette.
    He said
idly: “That was quite an exit line of yours.”
    “They
got the idea, did they?”
    “Very definitely. You could have heard a
pin drop. I heard one.”
    “I’d
give a lot to have seen Cookie’s face.”
    “She looked rather like a frog that was
being goosed by an electric eel.”
    The girl
laughed quickly; and then she stopped laughing.
    “I
hope I didn’t louse everything up for you.”
    “Oh, no.” He doubled her tone
exactly as she had doubled his. “But it was just a little
unexpected.”
    “For
a great detective, you’ve certainly got an awful memory.”
    He arched
an eyebrow at her.
    “Have
I?”
    “Do you remember the first crossing of
the Hindenburg — the year before it blew up?” She was
looking straight ahead, and he saw her profile intermittently as the
dimmed street lights touched it. “You were on board—I saw your
picture in a newsreel when you arrived. Of course, I’d seen pictures
of you before, but that reminded me. And then a couple of nights later you
were in a place called the Bali, opposite El Morocco. Jim Moriarty had
it—before he had the Barberry Room. I was bellowing with the
band there, and you came in and sat at the bar.” She
shrugged, and laughed again. “I must have made a tremendous
impression.”
    He didn’t remember. He never did remember, and
he never ceased to regret it. But it was one of those things.
    He said lamely: “I’m sorry—that was a
lot of years ago, and I was crashing all over town and seeing so
many people, and I can’t have been noticing much.”
    “Oh, well,” she said, with a stage
sigh. “Dexter the For gotten Girl. What a life! … And I thought
you came to my rescue tonight because you remembered. But all the time
you were taken up with so many people that you never even saw me.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I
must have been taken up with too many people. And I’ll never forgive any
of them.”
    She looked
at him, and her smile was teasing and gay, and her eyes were
straight and friendly with it, so that it was all only chatter and she was not even trying
to sell him anything; and he could only
smile back and think how much better it could have been if he remembered.
    “Maybe
you don’t know how lucky you were,” she said.
    “Maybe
I don’t,” he said.
    And it was a curious thing that he only half
understood what he was saying, or only half meant what he said; it
was only a throwaway line until after it was spoken, and then it was
something that could never be thrown away.
    This was something that had never been in his
mind at all when he abandoned himself to the simple