“Well, I got a feelin’ I’m about to, Luella. Say, could I buy you somethin’ to drink? I been tellin’ you all about myself, seems the least I could do. Say, bartender! Uh, give the young lady what she wants. Me, I’ll have a lemonade.” He cupped one hand alongside his mouth, whispered to the bartender, who was eyeing him stonily, “Put some gin in it.” To Luella he said apologetically, “I like gin in ’em.”
“Aren’t you a one, though, Sam.”
“Shucks,” the Saint said, “man’s got a right to have a little fun. Kind of hard for me, though, not knowin’ these places people’re always talkin’ about in Hollywood. Don’t know my way around very well yet.”
He put a hundred-dollar bill on the bar, replaced the roll in his pants pocket, and looked moodily into his lemonade with gin.
Luella’s manner became more animated. She clinked glasses. “Here’s to an evening of fun, Sam. I’ll tell you what, Sam. I have an engagement for the evening, but I can break it. I’ll be your pilot.”
“Well, say, that’s mighty fine of you, Luella. But I don’t like to bust up anything. Course a nice-lookin’ lady like you must keep awful busy, and an old duffer like me couldn’t expect you to—”
“Poo!” Luella said lightly. She laid a hand on the Saint’s sleeve. “Excuse me while I make a phone call.”
She went away to a phone booth, and though her conversation was unheard by the Saint, he felt that he could have written the dialogue.
From that point forward, events moved smoothly and orderly along their predestined path, and the gentleman known as Sam found himself in due course in the apartment of the lady known as Luella — “for a nightcap, Sam, dear.”
The nightcap was forthcoming, and Luella was forthright. She sat beside the Saint on a divan, and there was no quibbling about maintaining a space between them in the interests of morality. They touched, shoulder and thigh, and she gave him a long slow glance from long dark eyes.