“We could plant a potato in a pot,” said the girl wistfully, “and in six months we’d have vines trained over the window.”
The Saint sighed.
It was, he thought, an unjustly humiliating complication in the life of any self-respecting buccaneer. There had been other times when it had been difficult for him to stay in sundry towns, but those repulses had always been sponsored either by the police, who disapproved of him on principle, or by certain citizens who preferred to have only the police to contend with. Here he had done no harm and planned none — so far... He gazed moodily about the room, and it was at that moment, although neither of them thought anything of it at the time, that he made his first contact with the life of Luella Joyson.
She happened to be sitting at an adjoining table with an Air Force top sergeant, whose voice carried clearly to Simons ears.
“These real-estate prices have lost their altimeters,” the sergeant was saying. “But what’s a guy gonna do? This climate agrees with my kid, and my wife’s nuts about it. I’ve gotta give ’em a roof if it takes all my mustering-out and accrued pay.”
His companion smiled, and the Saint’s eyes focused on her. Her smile was one of Luella’s most valuable assets. It was fashioned with wide, fun lips exquisitely accented in a shade of shocking pink which matched the hue of her Adrian suit. The smile crinkled bewitchingly in the corners of long dark eyes. Between the red lips gleamed small even teeth, and a man instinctively wondered how it would feel to be bitten by them — lightly and without passion. This pleasing prospect was framed in shining black hair rippling to sleek square shoulders, and topped by an attractive but unnecessary scrap of hat.
When she spoke, the lazy promise in her voice brought the Saint to full attention.
“I know the spot you’re in, Sergeant — er, Bill — I can call you Bill, can’t I? The price is too high. I didn’t set it; I can’t do anything about that. But I’ll tell you what I can do. For you, Bill. I’ll knock my commission off the price.”
She laid a small white hand over the sergeant’s muscular brown paw for one brief instant, in a gesture compounded charmingly of propitiation and appeal.
A frown dwelt momentarily on the sergeant’s rugged young features. Then his gray eyes softened, and a corner of his straight-across mouth twisted upward.