The detective made a noise something like a cement mixer choking on a rock.
“What you’d better do is get it through your head that you aren’t getting away with anything in this town. This is one caper that’s licked before it starts. You’re washed up, Saint, so get smart while you’ve got time.”
Simon nodded.
“I’ll certainly tell the girl we can’t go on seeing each other. A man in my position—”
“A man in your position,” Wendel said, “ought to pack his bags and be out of town tomorrow while he has the chance.”
“I’ll think that over,” Simon said seriously. “Are you free for dinner again tonight? — we might make it a farewell feast.”
He was not surprised that the offer was discourteously rejected, and went on to the bar with plenty to occupy his mind.
One question was whether Wendel would be most likely to challenge Jeannine Roger openly, as he had challenged the Saint, or whether in the slightly different circumstances he would try to expose her to Lady Offchurch, or whether he would pull out of the warning business altogether and go out for blood.
The other question was whether Jeannine knew the score already, and what was brewing in her own elusive mind.
At any rate, he had nothing to lose now by going openly to the Bienville, and he deliberately did that, after a leisured savoring of oysters Rockefeller and gumbo filé at Antoine’s, while the young officer who was following him worried over a bowl of onion soup and his expense account. The same shadow almost gave him a personal escort into the courtyard off St Ann Street, and Simon thought it only polite to turn back and wave to him as he went up the outside stairs to Number 27.