"I'm sorry," he repeated with a smile. "But this little war is still going on, and maybe the enemy isn't waiting."
The same bellboy who had just carried the rawhide suitcase in and out of the elevator met him in the small lobby with a somewhat unresolved blend of eagerness and suspicion. The contents of the bag alone weighed a full hundred pounds, and the Saint swung it in one hand as if it had been empty.
"The lining in this damn thing is all coming unstuck," he said casually. "Is there any place near here where I could get it fixed?"
The boy's dilemma resolved itself visibly in his slightly bovine eyes.
"There's a luggage store a couple of blocks down on Lexington," he said; and the Saint gave him another quarter and sauntered out, still airily swinging the bag.
Not being Superman, he was wielding it a little less jauntily when he turned into the store; but apart from a mild feeling of dislocation in his left shoulder he was able to amuse himself a little with the business of making the purchases which he had in mind — one of which was somewhat eccentric, to say the least, and fairly baffling to the proprietor of the adjoining sporting goods emporium.
His next stop was at the Fifty-first Street police station, where he had a weighty message to leave for Inspector Fernack. Then he took another cab to the Algonquin, and walked into the lobby just as the gray handsome figure of Allen Uttershaw turned away from the desk and caught sight of him.
"The ass will carry his load," Uttershaw observed cheerily, raising his eyebrows at the Saint's burden. "I was just asking for you."
Simon surrendered his bag to a bellboy to be taken to his room, and shook hands.
"With all the doormen in the Army, the ass has to," he said. "Do you carry a pocket edition of Familiar Quotations?"