Her slim fingers reached impetuously for the Saint's hand.
"You wouldn't really do that — help Eddie to win back what he's lost—"
"What would you expect Robin Hood to do?" asked the Saint quizzically. "I've got a reputation to keep up — and I might even pay my own expenses while I'm doing it." He drew the revealing glasses towards him and tucked them back in his pocket. "Let's go and have some dinner and organize the details."
But actually there were hardly any details left to organize, for Josephine Grange's inspiration had been practically complete in its first outline. The Saint, who never believed in expending any superfluous effort, devoted most of his attention to some excellent lobster thermidor; but he had a pleasant sense of anticipation that lent an edge to his appetite. He knew, even then, that all those interludes of virtue in which he had so often tried to indulge, those brief intervals in which he played at being an ordinary respectable citizen and promised himself to forget that there was such a thing as crime, were only harmless self-deceptions — that for him the only complete life was still the ceaseless hair-trigger battle in which he had found so much delight. And this episode had everything that he asked to make a perfect cameo.
He felt like a star actor waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act of an obviously triumphant first night when they left the girl at the Roney Plaza and walked over to the Riptide — "that's where we usually meet," Mercer explained. And a few minutes later he was being introduced to the other two members of the cast.
Mr. Yoring, who wore the pince-nez, was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit, with white hair and bloodhound jowls and a pathetically frustrated expression. He looked like a retired businessman whose wife took him to the opera. Mr. Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner: he looked like the kind of man that men like Mr. Yoring wish they could be. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Mr. Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.
"Having a good time here, Mr. Templar?"
"Pretty good."
"Ain't we all having a good time?" crowed Mr. Yoring. "I'm gonna buy a drink."
"I've just ordered a drink," said Mr. Kilgarry.