The Saint said: "No."
"Why?" wheedled Titania Ourley.
"Because you don't have to try and pump me for information like you did at the Algonquin, because I'm not investigating your personal nastiness or your husband's subrosa activities. That's been taken over by the — oh, Lord — proper authorities. Because you can read the newspapers for anything it's good for you to know. Because I hate to rumba. And," said the Saint, with dispassionate deliberation, "because you not only look like a cow, but you smell like tuberoses on a fresh grave."
He put the telephone back on its rest and lighted a cigarette but he had barely brought it alive when the bell rang again.
The operator said: "I have a call from Washington."
"Hamilton," said the telephone, with pleasant precision. "Nice work, Simon."
"Thank you," said the Saint.
"I just wish that one of these days you'd bring 'em back alive. There is such a thing as good propaganda, if you don't know it."
The Saint hitched himself more comfortably on to his bed, and adjusted his bathrobe over his long legs. His mind was clouded with many memories, and yet the core of it was clear and sure and without remorse.
"Uttershaw wasn't such a bad fellow, in his own way," he said. "I guess my hand must have slipped. But if he had any time to think, I think he would have liked that."
The telephone played with its own static.
"What happens with Ourley?" it asked after a while.
"I just did a little more for him," said the Saint. "You could never hang anything on him in a court of law so far as this case is concerned; but he still has Titania, and I've come to the conclusion that as a life sentence she's even worse than Alcatraz. And with the encouragement I gave her a few minutes ago, she should be even better company than she was before."
"That Sinclair girl ought to get about ten years, with Fernack's testimony of what he heard from outside the door before he broke in," said the telephone callously. "She's a good-looking number, though, isn't she? What happened to you? Are you slipping?"
"Maybe I am."
"Well… Whenever you're ready, there is something else I'd like to talk to you about."
The Saint laughed a little, and it was silent and all the way inside himself, and deep and unimportant and nothing that could be talked about ever.
"I'll catch a plane this afternoon and meet you at the Carlton for dinner. I was just wondering what I could find to do."
He lay on the bed for a little while longer after he had hung up, smoking his cigarette and thinking about several things or perhaps not anything much. But he kept remembering a girl with hair that had been stroked by midnight, and eyes that were all darkness, and lips that were like orchid petals. And that was no damn good at all.
He got up and began to pack.