"You 'eard," growled the Saint trenchantly, in the time-honored formula of Cockney repartee. "You ain't got clorf ears."
That was when Cookie and Dr. Zellermann arrived.
Cookie said overwhelmingly: "Ferdy, don't be so sensitive. Tom's got a right to enjoy himself—"
Dr. Zellermann sidled behind the bar and leaned over towards the Saint and said with his monastic charm: "You know, in my studies of psychology nothing has ever fascinated me so much as the symbolism of the sailor. Of course you've heard all that stuff about the 'girl in every port' and 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor?' and so on. Really a fine synopsis of the natural impetuous life. But why?... You have a proverb which says there is no smoke without fire. Then where is the fire? The sailor — the sea. The sea, which once covered the whole earth. The sea, out of which our earliest protoplasmic ancestors first crawled to begin the primitive life which you and I are now enlarging..."
The Saint gaped at him with adoring incomprehension.
Cookie was absent-mindedly pouring herself another year or two of Old MacSporran, and saying to Mr. Pairfield: "Now for God's sake, Ferdy, have some Violette and stop fussing. And then you can be a good boy and see if the beds are all ready, there's a dear."
"Now take your own case, Tom," Zellermann was pursuing engagingly. "When you get to Shanghai, for instance—"
There was a sudden mild crash as Patrick Hogan spilled two glasses and an ashtray off the table in front of him in the act of hoisting himself to his feet.
"I'm goin' to the little sailor boy's room," he proclaimed loudly.
"Second door on your right down the hall," said Kay Natello, as if she had been reciting it all her life.