He had no lasting interest in Orlando Flane as a person at all, and might have forgotten him again altogether if they had not been literally thrown together so very shortly afterwards.
That is, to be excruciatingly specific, Orlando Flane was thrown. Or appeared to be. At any rate, he seemed to be nearing the end of a definite trajectory when Simon opened the outer door of Mr Ufferlitz’s office and almost tripped over him. Only because he was prepared by a lifetime of lightning reactions, Simon adapted himself resiliently to the shock and scooped the actor up with one sinewy arm.
“Is there a lot of fun like this around here?” he inquired pleasantly, looking at Peggy Warden, who was getting up rather suddenly from her typewriter.
Then he saw that Mr Ufferlitz himself was standing in the communicating doorway to his private office, and realised exactly what certain remarks of the cynical Lazaroff were intended to convey, and why out of his own experienced judgement he had sensed long ago that Mr Ufferlitz was not merely a farcical stock character.
“Get out of here,” Byron Ufferlitz was saying coldly. “And stay out, you drunken bum.”
Orlando Flane might have gone back to the floor a second time, if the Saint had not been interestedly holding him up. He reeled inside the supporting semicircle of the Saint’s arm, and wiped the back of his hand across his bruised lips. But he had sobered surprisingly, and there was no more alcoholic slur in his syllables than there was in the savage set of his dark long-lashed eyes as he looked back across the room.
“All right, you bastard,” he said distinctly. “You can throw me out now because I’m drunk. But I can remember just as far back as you can. I’ve got plenty of things to settle with you, and when I fix you up you’re going to stay fixed!”
3
The colored butler showed Simon into April Quest’s living-room, and brought him a Martini. It was a comfortable room, modern in style, but it had the untouched impersonal feeling of an interior decorator’s exhibit. Everything in it looked very new and overwhelmingly harmonious. But the chairs were large and relaxing, the sort of chairs that a man likes, and at least there were no sham-period gewgaws or laboriously exotic touches.
Simon lighted a cigarette and amused himself with some magazines which he found on a shelf under the table by the couch. Some of them were fan magazines, and one of them had her picture on the cover. He remembered now that it had caught his eye on a newsstand not long ago. Naturally it was a beautiful face, since that was part of her profession, framed in softly waved auburn hair, with a small nose and high cheekbones and large expressive eyes. But he had noticed her mouth, which was generous and yet sultry, laughing and yet wilful, as if she could be passionate in her selfishness but never cold or unkind... Then he looked up, and she was standing in front of him.