“Who, me? How did dat happen?”
The Saint shrugged, tossing the gloves on the living-room divan as he turned on lights.
“I don’t know,” said the Saint. “It must have been shady there.”
He flung himself down on the divan and stretched his long legs luxuriously, while Hoppy struggled briefly with his Delphic observation and then discarded the entire subject as the bottle on the sideboard caught his eye.
“Keerist!” he muttered. “Me tongue’s hangin’ out.”
He made a bee-line for the half-bottle of Kentucky dew, throttling it with an enormous hairy paw as he lifted it to his mouth, back-tilted like the maw of a baying wolf. His Adam’s apple plunged in convulsive rhythm as the contents lowered an inch a second, a full four seconds elapsing before he straightened his neck again, halted in mid-swallow by the pop of a cork.
The Saint had a fresh bottle of Old Forester on his lap and was reaching for a glass from the top of a cabinet by the divan.
Hoppy’s mouth pursed in hurt reproach.
“So dat’s why it’s locked,” he deduced aggrievedly.
“And a good thing too,” the Saint said.