“Montreal is yours,” said the Saint with a gesture. “What would you like? Respectable night clubs? Disreputable saloons? Historic monuments?”
She seemed to be thinking of something else. And then she turned towards him again in a pose very like his own. The deep friendly eyes had a queer wistfulness.
“Tell me, stranger — where do you think a girl should go on a great occasion? Suppose she had something rather desperate to do, and if it went wrong she mightn’t be able to choose where she went anymore.”
The Saint’s very clear blue eyes rested on her thoughtfully. He had always been mad, always hoped to be.
“I think,” he said, “I should take her out St Lawrence Boulevard to a quiet little restaurant I know where they make the best omelets in North America. We should absorb vitamins and talk about life. And after that we might know some more.”
“I should like to go there,” she said.
Simon flicked a twenty-dollar bill across his table and beckoned the waiter. The waiter counted out change laboriously from a well-filled wallet.
“Shall we?” said the Saint.
The girl gathered up her gloves and bag. Simon stood up quickly to pull the table away from in front of her. He trod heavily on the waiter’s toes, overbalanced him backwards, and caught him again dexterously as he was on the point of descending, like Newton’s apple, on the bald head of a customer in the next row. Somewhere in the course of the acrobatics the well-filled wallet traveled from the waiter’s pocket to the Saint’s own.
“ Mille pardons,” murmured the Saint, patting the anguished man soothingly on the shoulder, and sauntered after the girl.