“Who’re you?” the young mouth snarled. “Whadda you know about it?”
“Take it easy,” drawled the Saint softly. “I’m just the innocent bystander and I’d like to avoid his traditional fate. I just happened to be sitting at the next table to you at lunch — remember? — And I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with the lovely Luella.”
“That —!” The sergeant used a one-syllable expletive and inventoried the dregs of his vocabulary for kindred honorifics reflecting variously on her character, morals, charms, and ancestry — which was, one inferred, dubious.
The bartender brought a drink. The Saint tasted it, and felt the moth wings of anticipation grow firmer. Like fingers on his spine.
“Then you didn’t buy a house?” he asked mildly.
The soldier reached into one of his blouse pockets, his face still frozen, but the deadliness gone from his eyes. He produced a film holder of the type and size used in a Speed Graphic camera. He tossed it onto the bar.
“There’s my house,” he said viciously. “How do you like the color scheme? Isn’t it swell, with all the pepper trees around it? And the closed back yard for the kid to play in, just like the doctor said. But what I like best is the view — Baldy, Mount Wilson, and Catalina on a clear day. That’s my house, whoever you are, fourteen hundred bucks’ worth, by God!”
The Saint’s chiseled features developed set lines of their own. He picked up the film holder, turned it over in his hands.
“There’s a negative in this, of course?”
“Sure. A picture of Luella. A keepsake!”