He didn’t look at her again until Lady Offchurch passed his table, on her way to the special conveniences of the restaurant, and then he turned again and met the gray eyes squarely and timelessly.
The girl looked back at him, and her face was as smooth and translucent as the maharajah’s pearls, and as brilliantly expressionless.
Then she lowered her eyes to a book of matches in front of her, and wrote inside the cover with a pencil from her bag.
The Saint’s gaze left her again, and didn’t even return when a passing waiter placed a match booklet somewhat ostentatiously in front of him.
He opened the cover and read:
27 Bienville Apts. St Ann Street at 10:30
Lady Offchurch was returning to her table. Simon Templar paid his check, put the matches in his pocket, and strolled out to pass the time at the Absinthe House.
This was the way things happened to him, and he couldn’t fight against fate.
So after a while he was strolling down St Ann Street, until he found the Bienville. He went through an archway into a cobble-stoned courtyard, and there even more than in the narrow streets of the Vieux Carré it was like dropping back into another century, where cloaks and swords had a place. Around him, like a stage setting, was a chiaroscuro of dim lights and magnolia and wrought-iron balconies that seemed to have been planned for romantic and slightly illicit assignations, and he could make no complaint about the appropriateness of his invitation.
He found an outside stairway that led up to a door beside which a lantern hung over the number 27, and she opened the door before he touched the knocker.