He saw a very short man with enormous shoulders and an even more enormous stomach swelling below a stiff white shirtfront. He carried a raggedly chewed cigar in thick hirsute fingers, and his black beetling brows arched up and down in apoplectic exasperation.
"Tiny!" he roared at his wife, thereby causing even the Saint to blink. "I've told you before that I'll make no effort to control your comings and goings outside of this house, but I will not have you bringing your gigolos into my home!"
Mrs Ourley bridled automatically.
"But he's not a… I asked him to drop in."
"So," said Milton Ourley thunderously. "You admit it. Well, | this is just about the last—"
"But Milton," she protested coldly, "this is Mr Templar. Simon Templar. You know — the Saint."
"Jumping Jehosaphat!" roared Mr Ourley. "The what?"
Simon turned back from the Beauvais tapestry which he had been surveying while he allowed the first ecstatic symptoms of marital bliss to level off.
"The Saint," he said pleasantly. "How do you do?"
"Dabbity dab dab dab," said Mr Ourley. A new flood of adrenalin in his blood stream caused him to inflate inwardly until he looked more than ever like a bellicose bullfrog. "Tiny, have you gone out of your mind? Asking this crook, this — this busybody—"