"Of course." She gave him a quick smile with the slightest troublement in it. "Please — did I say anything wrong? I'm not a celebrity hunter. That isn't why I came with you. I just wanted to."
"I was just a little surprised," he said.
She looked out of the window at the sparsely scattered stars that the dimout had left below; and then she said, without her eyes meeting his directly: "Couldn't we get out of here? Haven't you got an apartment somewhere? Or I have. And a radio. I'll buy you a drink and we can get sweet music on WQXR and talk about Life."
He drew slowly at his cigarette.
"That could be swell," he said; and her eyes turned to his face again.
"I'll have to make a phone call and break another date," she said with a smile. "But it doesn't seem to matter a bit."
He stood up while she left the table, and then he sat down again and propped his cigarette arm on one elbow for about as long as it took to absorb three more long and contemplative drags.
Then he got up and strolled unhurriedly out of the restaurant.
He strolled past the bar, past the men's room, past the hat-check girl. There was an elevator engorging a flock of satisfied diners. Almost accidentally, it might have seemed, the Saint drifted in on the heels of the last passenger, and was dropped with ear-numbing swiftness to the street.
Ten minutes later he was on the steps of Gabriel Linnet's house again.