"Aow, it's orl in the dye's work, ma'm. But I ses ter meself, I'm goin' ter see New York while I got the charnce, by crikey."
"Where are you heading for next?"
"Through the canal an' strite to Shanghai. Then back from there to Frisco. Then—"
"Say, Cookie," interrupted Hogan brazenly, "how's about a drop of real liquor for a couple o' good friends who've dried their throats to a cinder with cheerin' for ye?"
She took a deep man-sized drag at her cigarette, flicked ash from it on to the table, and glanced at the Saint again with expressionless and impersonal calculation.
"I might find you a drop," she said.
She stood up and started away; and Patrick Hogan nudged the Saint with one of his broad disarming winks as they followed her.
"What did I tell ye, Tom?"
"Cor," said the Saint appreciatively, "you ain't arf a one." They went through a door at the side of the service bar, which took them into a kitchen that might once have been bustling and redolent with the concoction of rare dishes for the delectation of gourmets. Now it looked bare and drab and forlorn. There was no one there. A centre table was piled with loaves of bread and stacks of sliced ham and cheese, and littered with crumbs and scraps. Cases of coke and pop were pyramided in one corner. The only thing on the stove was an enormous steaming coffee pot; and a mass of dirty cups and plates raised sections of their anatomy, like vestiges of a sunken armada, out of the lake of greasy water in the sink.
Cookie led the way into another room that opened off the kitchen. It was so tiny that it must once have seen duty as a store room. Now it barely had space for a couple of plain chairs, a wastebasket, a battered filing cabinet, and a scarred desk scattered with bills and papers. Kay Natello sat at the desk, in front of an antique typewriter, pecking out an address on an envelope with two clawlike fingers.