"A man with your imagination should have been able to do better. After all, Mr. Sebastian Tombs is getting to be almost as well known as the great Simon Templar — isn't he?"
The Saint nodded, admitting his lapse, and making a mental note that the time had come to tear himself finally away from the alter ego to which he had clung with perverse devotion for too many years.
"You keep pretty well up-to-date," he remarked.
"Why not?" she returned frankly. "I've had an idea for some time that I'd be getting a visit from you one day."
"Would that be the voice of conscience?"
"Just common sense. Even you can't have a monopoly on thinking ahead."
Simon studied her interestedly. The vats of champagne which had sparkled down her gullet in aid of one charity or another over the past six years had left their own thin dry tang in her voice, but few of her other indulgences had left their mark. The cargoes of caviar, the schools of smoked salmon, the truckloads of foie gras, the coveys of quail, the beds of oysters and the regiments of lobsters which had marched in eleemosynary procession through her intestines, had resolved themselves into very little solid flesh. Unlike most of her kind, she had not grown coarse and flabby; she had aged with a lean and arid dignity. At fifty, Maggie Oaks, late of Weehauken and the Follies, really looked like a countess, even if it was a rather tart and dessicated countess. She looked like one of those brittle fish-blooded aristocrats who stand firm for kindness to animals and discipline for the lower classes. She had hard bright eyes and hard lines cracked into the heavy layers of powder and enamel on her face, and she was a hard bad woman in spite of her successful sophistication.
"At least that saves a lot of explanations," said the Saint, and she returned his gaze with her coldly quizzical stare.
"I take it that I was right — that you've picked me for your next victim."
"Let's call it 'contributor,' " suggested the Saint mildly.