He reached Oyster Bay soon after six-thirty, and after the inevitable series of encounters with village idiots, characters with cleft palates, and strangers to the district, he was able to get himself directed to Mr Ourley's little place.
This little place was no larger than a fairly flourishing hotel, occupying the center of a small park. Simon watched the enormous iron-studded portal open as he approached it with the reasonable expectation of seeing the hallway flanked with a double line of periwigged footmen; but instead of that it was Mrs Ourley herself who stood fabulously revealed on the threshold, gowned and corseted in a strapless evening dress that made her-upper section look slightly like an overfilled ice cream cone.
"Simon! You darling boy! How wonderful of you to remember!"
She insisted on taking both his hands as she drew him in, and still holding on to them when he was inside — doubtless under the impression that this gave her some of the winsome appeal of Mary Martin in her last picture.
He found himself in an immense pseudo-baronial hall cluttered with ponderous drapes and gilt furniture, and atmospherically clogged with a concentration of perfume on which it might have' been possible to float paper boats. As Mrs Ourley dragged him closer to her bosom, it became stiflingly plain that she herself was the wellspring of this olfactory soup.
"I was just driving by," Simon began as arranged, "and—”
"And of course you had to stop! I just knew you couldn't forget—”
"What the dabbity dab is going on here?" boomed a sudden wrathful voice from the background.
Mrs Ourley jumped away with a guilty squeal; and Simon turned to inspect Mr Ourley with as much composure as Mrs Ourley's over-zealous interpretation of her part could leave him.
"Good evening," he said politely.