“I work for Esteban, in a sort of way.”
“As a shill?” Simon inquired.
The other flushed.
“I bring people to the club and I get a small commission on the business. It’s perfectly legitimate.”
“It would be in a legitimate business. So you shill for the joint. You latch on to visiting pigeons around town and steer them in to be plucked.” Simon studied him critically. “Times must be getting tough, Maurice. I seem to remember that you used to do much better marrying them occasionally and getting a nice settlement before they divorced you.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” Kerr said redly. “I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve never been mixed up with murder, and I don’t want to be.”
The Saint’s cigarette rose to a last steady glow before he let it drop into an ashtray.
“Whether you want it or not, you are,” he said. “But we’ll take the best care we can of your tattered reputation.”
He held out his hand to Patricia and helped her up, and they went out and left Maurice Kerr on his own doorstep, looking like a rather sullen and perturbed penguin, with an empty glass still clutched in his hand.
“And that,” said Patricia, as the Saint nursed his car around a couple of quiet blocks and launched it into the southbound stream of Collins Avenue, “might be an object lesson to Dr Watson, but I left my dictionary at home.”