A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he looked up and back. April mirrored his movement at the same time. Mr Byron Ufferlitz stood between them, looking heavily genial with a fat cigar in his mouth.
“That was nice cooperation, kiddies,” he rumbled. “I told him to get another later on, when you’re dancing. How’s everything?”
“Fine,” April said.
She smiled dazzlingly, but her voice sounded very faintly mechanical.
“How ya getting on with the Saint? He’s all right, huh? What a profile! And that figure... You two are gonna make a great team. Maybe you’ll do a lotta pictures together, like Garbo and Gilbert or Colman and Banky in the old days.”
“I can’t afford it,” said the Saint. “Earning that kind of money is too expensive these days.”
“We’ll take care of that,” said Mr Ufferlitz jovially, if a trifle ambiguously. “Say, April, about your new hair-do, I was talkin’ to Westmore just now and...”
Simon looked around the room and caught the raised eyebrows of Dick Halliday, who had just come in with Mary Martin. He grinned, and then he saw Martha Scott and Carl Alsop making faces at him, and they were just the first of other faces that were breaking into expressions of recognition, and he knew that he was certainly going to have to be well paid for the explanations he would have to make to some of his friends in Hollywood for his manner of arriving back among them. Then, trying to postpone that awkward moment by finding some blank direction to turn to, he looked towards the entrance from the bar and saw Orlando Flane.
Flane was looking right at them. He had a highball glass in his hand, and his feet were braced apart as if to steady himself. In spite of that he was swaying a little. His too-handsome face was flushed, and his hair and necktie had the uncomfortably rumpled look that can never be confused with any other kind of untidiness. There was no doubt that Orlando Flane was drunk again, or still drunk. The twist of his mouth was vicious.
“Well, I mustn’t stay any longer,” Mr Ufferlitz was saying. “Don’t want to look like I was promoting this. Have yourselves a time, and don’t worry about the check. It’s all taken care of. ’Bye.”