“Good evening, Your Majesty,” he said.
He started to stand up.
“Siddown!” Frankie barked, and the Saint raised his eyebrows as he subsided.
“Excuse me. It was just my old-world manners. I was always taught to stand up when a lady comes into the room — especially if she’s a queen.”
Hoppy said incredulously, “Ya mean dat’s de King of de Beggars? Dat old bag?”
“Shut up,” Frankie snarled.
“It doesn’t matter what they say now,” Mrs Wingate said. “Hazel—”
Big Hazel nodded and went to a small side table. She pulled out a drawer and took out the materials for a hypodermic injection — a syringe, ampules, cotton, alcohol. She began to fit a needle on the glass barrel of the syringe, as efficiently as a trained nurse. Simon realised that she might once have been one.
“Do we get the treatment, too?” he asked.
Mrs Wingate gave him a pale-eyed glance.