At the next table the girl’s gray eyes wavered in humorous despair toward him, meeting his own for an instant, which to a Simon Templar was sufficient invitation.
“ Ecoute, toi! ” The Saint’s voice lanced through the air with a sudden quiet command, the edge of a blade so sweetly keen that it seemed to caress even while it cut, sapping the waiter’s wandering eyes around like a magnet dropped within an inch of twin compass needles. “Mademoiselle desires that one mix three parts of Ron Rey with one part of sweet vermouth and a dash of Angostura. After that, one will squeeze into it a very thin piece of lemon peel. It is quite simple.”
The waiter nodded and moved away in a slight daze. In his philosophy, foreigners were not expected to speak his own patois better than he did himself, nor to cut short his studied obtuseness with a cool self-possession that addressed him in the familiar second person singular. In the doorway he paused to explain that at length to a fellow waiter. “ Sâles Américains, ” he said, and spat. Simon Templar was not meant to hear, but the Saint’s ears were abnormally sensitive.
He smiled. It would never have occurred to him to report the waiter to the management, even though he was sure they would have been grateful to be warned about such a saboteur of goodwill. To the Saint any city was an oyster for his opening, a world for conquest; anything was an adventure, even the slaying of an insolent waiter and the rescue of a damsel in distress about nothing more serious than a cocktail.
He let his cigarette smolder in absolute contentment. The Rumhattan arrived. The girl tasted it and grimaced ruefully — he decided that she had a mouth that couldn’t look anything but pretty even when it tried.
“It’s a good idea, but it needs co-operation,” he said.
“I wish I could speak the language like you do,” she said. “I’d have something to tell that waiter.”
“I’ve spent more time in Paris than any respectable man should,” said the Saint cheerfully. “I used to be the concierge of a home for inebriate art students in the Rue des Deux Paires de Chaussettes de M. Alexandre Dumas. We all lived on absinthe and wore velvet next the skin. It went very well until someone discovered that half the inmates were wearing false beards and reading Ellery Queen in secret.”
The gray eyes laughed.
“But do you know your way about here?”