"I was there," said the Saint vaguely, "for a while."
"I saw you."
"Quite a big night, wasn't it?" Avalon said. She sank back on to the settee. "Come on in and have a drink and tell us your troubles. Simon, fix something for her."
"I won't stay," Kay Natello said. "I didn't know you had company."
She hauled her angular bony frame out of its lean-to position against the entrance arch as gauchely as she put her spoken sentences together.
"Don't be so ridiculous," Avalon said. She was impatiently hospitable — or hospitably impatient. "We were just talking. What did you come in for, if you didn't want to stay for a few minutes?"
"I had a message for you," Kay Natello said. "If Mr. Templar would excuse us...?"
"If it's from Cookie, Mr. Templar was part of the ruckus, so it won't hurt him to hear it."
The other woman went on pinching her lower lip with skeletal fingers. Her shadowed eyes went back to the Saint with completely measurable blankness, and back to Avalon again.
"All right," she said. "I didn't mean to crash in here at all, really, but Cookie made such a fuss about it. You know how she is. She was a bit tight, and she lost her temper. Now she's getting tighter because she shouldn't have. She'd like to forget the whole thing. If you could... sort of... make it up with her..."