“Put ’er there, Mr Templar,” he said, with a ring in his voice. “I’ll be right here, any time your pardner wants me. Bonanza City Hotel.”
Simon shook the thin callused hand, and beckoned the bartender. No longer bored, a sycophant stepped up with alacrity.
“Yes, sir!”
“The same, for Mr McDill and myself,” ordered the Saint. “Double,” he added.
He drove away from the Bonanza City Hotel through the light bright California sunshine bearing within him a warmth entirely unconnected with alcoholic potations, and pondering on the varied expressions of man’s unending search for riches. Perhaps that was what had moved him to dawdle on back roads and in odd corners of the old gold-rush country for a full three days on his way to San Francisco. When the mood was on him, the Saint enjoyed the exploration of seemingly useless, if fascinating, trivia — in this instance, the dreaming gold camps and ghost towns of the forty-niners.
It was a penchant which sometimes paid surprising dividends, so that the Saint had come to have an almost superstitious faith in his infallible destiny, but in this case the connection came even faster and more unexpectedly than usual.
He had been installed in rooms in the Fairmont, high on Nob Hill, for the duration of a sleep and a breakfast, when his telephone asserted itself, for the first time since his arrival.
“I’ve called every day since I got your card,” said Larry Phelan, “and I was pretty sure you’d show up within the year. What trouble did you come here to stir up?”
“None at all,” said the Saint virtuously. “I am on a vacation, and I have taken a vow to right no wrong, rescue no young ladies in distress, and acquire no money by fair means or foul, until further notice.”
“That’s fine,” said Phelan. “There’s nothing in your vow about rescuing old ladies in distress, is there?”