He did not regard this sensation as the result of a psychic gander into the immediate future, nor as the brushing of the back of his neck by an ectoplasmic hand once belonging to the goose-over-a-grave school of premonitory shuddering. The tingle he felt when James Prather followed his bulging eyes across the deserted floor of Cookie's Cellar was, he knew, the result of his adrenals sitting up and taking notice.
For Simon had added the factors, and their sum total was danger. Not that he expected explosive action at the moment. He could have written the dialogue to come almost word for word. These characters weren't certain where and how the Saint fitted into the picture. Their motivation at the moment was the desire for such knowledge, and they would go about satisfying that desire in a fashion designed to be subtle and offhand.
Nobody would say, yet: "Just what the hell are you doing here?"
The Saint said under his breath to Avalon: "Get a table. Yonder bucko would have words with me. I'll join you."
She sandwiched herself between Sam and Joe and piloted them to the far wall, which had been pleasantly blank before Ferdinand Pairfield had agonized upon it in pastel, and the Saint waited for Prather.
"Just what the hell are you doing here?" Prather demanded.
The Saint did not allow so much as the quiver of an eyelash to acknowledge his downfall as a prophet. His lazy smile and mocking blue eyes only indicated amusement at the gauche approach. Prather flushed under the steady gaze, and his lobster-like eyes shifted away and back. In their shifting away, they touched on Joe Hyman and Sam Jeffries but showed no trace of recognition.
"Comrade," the Saint said, "far back in the history of this country certain gentlemen flung powder and shot about in the cause of freedom. Such points as they won have been traditionally passed down through the years, and one of those points is the untrammelled right to visit such places as this, with its steel-trap economy, its bad air and worse drinks. Just why anyone in his right mind should like to exercise his right to such dubious pleasure is beyond me, but there it is."
"There's something fishy about this," Prather said in a sort of bewildered whine. "First, you come to my place with a song and dance about research. Then you follow me here. Why? I know who you are. You're the Saint. But I can't see why you followed me."
"Follow you? Dear boy, I wouldn't follow you into the flossiest bagnio this side of Paradise. But now that you seem to have made such a lightning trip here, I'm happy to see you. Won't you join my party? I'm still gathering material."