What the detective thought would have been inaudible even in the volume of voice which his congested face portended, for at that moment Mrs Wingate’s vocal analysis of her heart attained a screeching fortissimo that almost scraped the paint off the walls.
“My heart is gladder than all these,
Because — my lo-o-ove — has come to me!”
As silence finally settled upon tortured eardrums, there was some perfunctory applause. It was rather nicely adjusted to show grateful appreciation without encouraging an encore. Since apparently the coffee and doughnuts would not be served until after the entertainment, the audience could not walk out, but it did not have to be hysterical.
Mrs Wingate panted and bowed twitteringly to the very last handclap, which naturally came from Stephen Elliott.
“Thank you, thank you, my dear friends... And now I see that our special guest of the evening has arrived, and I’m going to ask him to come up here and say a few words to you. It is a great privilege to be able to introduce — Mr Simon Templar.”
Simon stepped up on the platform to the resigned acclamation of the coffee-and-doughnuts claque. He raised Mrs Wingate’s ugly hand to his lips and ushered her off in giggling confusion. Then he made a sigh of dismissal to the piano player.
“I’m not going to sing,” he said.
While the accompanist withdrew, he waved cheerily to the gaping Lieutenant Kearney, and ran friendly blue eyes over the faces of the rest of the audience. A few of them looked like the respectable struggling poor, some were ordinary shiftless-down-and-outs; these would be bona fide beggars, helpless victims of the King’s racket; and undoubtedly there were others who worked directly for the King. Big Hazel Green was nowhere in evidence, but he saw Frankie Weiss sitting a few rows back from the dais.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and others,” Simon began. “Some of you may have heard of me. Some of you may not. I’m sometimes known as the Saint.”