The Saint put his cigarette to his lips.
"I just dropped in," he said. "I wondered if you looked quite as nasty in the flesh as the stories I've read about you made you out to be. Also because I heard you'd be interested in any news about Marty O'Connor."
"Where is he?"
Simon's smile widened by a vague seraphic fraction.
"That's my secret."
Luckner took his feet off the table and got up slowly until he faced the Saint. He was six inches shorter than Simon but he thrust his lumpy red face up as close as he could under the Saint's nose.
"Where is he?"
"It's just possible," said the Saint in his slow soft voice, without a shift of his eyes, "that you've got some mistaken ideas about what I am and what I've come here for. If you had an idea, for instance, that your ugly mug was so terrifying that I'd fold up as soon as I saw it, or that I'd tell you anything until I was ready to tell it — well, we'd better go back to the beginning and start again."
Luckner glared at him silently for a second, and then he said in a very level tone: "Who the hell are you?"
"I am the Saint."