“Shall we say, as men of the world, Mr. Templar—it’s hardly necessary to beat about the bush—that your arrival was a little inopportune?” said Bittle.
The Saint wrinkled his brow.
“Shall we?” he asked vaguely, as though the question was a very difficult riddle. “I give it up.”
Bittle shrugged and went over to a side table on which stood decanter, siphon, and glasses.
“Whisky, Mr. Templar?”
“Thanks,” said the Saint, “I’ll have one when I get home. I’m very particular about the people I drink with. Once I had a friend who was terribly careless that way, and one day they fished him out of the canal in Soerabaja. I should hate to be fished out of anywhere.”
“To show there’s no ill-feeling. . . .”
“If I drank your whisky, son,” said the Saint, “I’m so afraid there might be all the ill-feeling we could deal with.”
Bittle came back to the table and crushed the stump of his cigar into an ashtray. He looked at the Saint, and something about the Saint’s quietness sent that draughty shiver prickling again up Bittle’s vertebræ, The Saint was still exactly where he had stood when he emerged from behind the curtain; the Saint did not seem at all embarrassed; and the Saint seemed to have all the time in the world to kill. The Saint, in short, looked as though he was waiting for something and in no particular hurry about it, and Bittle was beginning to get worried.
“Hardly conduct befitting a gentleman, shall we say, Mr. Templar?” Bittle temporised.