"Then, sweetheart, you'll be interested to know that I'm going to make an important phone call, if you'll excuse me a minute."
He went to a coin phone at the rear of the restaurant and called the Times-Tribune again.
"It's all set," said the flat voice of the city editor. "Any time you want to pick me up."
"I'm just finishing dinner," said the Saint grimly. "If nothing happens on the way, I'll pick you up within thirty minutes."
He went back to the table, and found Olga placidly powdering her perfect nose.
"I hate to break this up," he said, "but I have a short call to make; and I have to deliver you back to the Blue Goose in time to catch the next influx of salesmen."
"Whatever you like," she replied calmly. "I don't have to be exactly on time though, so you do whatever you want to do."
It was impossible to stir her even with virtual insult.
But he drove the Ford himself this time, knowing that it could have seemed a much better moment for ambush than before dinner. Yet even then nothing happened, in such a way that the mere failure of anything to happen was a subtle rebuke in exactly the same key as all her refusals to rise to his varied provocations.
His sleepless sense of direction enabled him to drive without a mistake to the offices of the Times-Tribune; and he arrived there with no more alarm than a slight stiffness in muscles which had been poised too long on an uncertain fuse. But then, the egregious efficiency of Detective Yard had still conspired to blind him to the shift of concealing newspapers which had punctuated his exit from the Alamo House.