The Saint Sees It Through (20 page)

“Tom Simons.”

“I don’t remember, but think of nothing
of it. Where was
it we met?”

“Murmansk, I think—durin’ the war?”

“It’s just as likely. Two weeks I’ve
spent there on two trips,
an’ divil a night sober.”

It appeared that Hogan found this a happy and
satisfactory
condition, for he had obviously taken some steps already
towards
inoculating himself against the evils of sobriety. His voice was
a little
slurred, and his breath was warmed with spicier fluids
than passed over the
counter of Cookie’s Canteen.

“This ‘ere’s a bit of orl right, ain’t
it?” Simon said, indi
cating the general surroundings with a wave of
his bottle.

“There’s nothing better in New York,
Tom. An’ that Cookie
—she’s a queen, for all she sings songs
that’d make your own
father blush.”

“She is, is she?”

“Shure she is, an’ I’ll fight any man
that says she isn’t. Haven’t ye heard her before?”

“Naow. Will she be ‘ere ternight?”

“Indeed she will. Any minute now. That’s
what I come in
for. If it wasn’t for her, I’d rather have a drink that’ll
stay with
me ‘an a girl I can have to meself to roll in the hay. But
Cookie
can take care of that too, if she’s a friend of yours.”

He winked broadly, a happy pagan with a girl
and a hang
over in every port.

“Coo,”
said the Saint,
properly impressed. “And are yer a
friend of ‘ers?”

“You bet I am. Why, last Saturday she
takes me an’ a friend
o’ mine out to that fine club she has, an’
gives us all the drinks
we can hold; an’ there we are livin’ like
lords until daybreak,
an’ she says any time we want to go back we
can do the same.
An’ if you’re a friend o’ mine, Tom, why, she’ll do the
same
for you.”

“Lumme,” said the Saint hungrily.
“Jer fink she would?”

“Indeed she will. Though I’m surprised at
an old man like you havin’ these ideas.”

“I ain’t so old,” said the Saint
aggrievedly. “And if it comes
ter ‘aving fun wif a jine—”

A figure loomed over the table and mopped
officiously over
it with a checkered rag. The hand on the rag was pale and
long-
fingered, and Simon noticed that the fingernails were painted
with a
violet-tinted lacquer.

Hardly daring to believe that anything so good
could be
true, the Saint let his eyes travel up to the classical
features and
pleated golden hair of the owner of that exotic manicure.

It was true. It was Ferdinand Pairfield.

Mr. Pairfield looked at the Saint,
speculatively, but without
a trace of recognition; discarded him, and
smirked at the more
youthful and rugged-looking Hogan.

“Any complaints, boys?” he asked
whimsically.

“Yes,” Hogan said flatly. “I
don’t like the help around
here.”

Mr. Pairfield pouted.

“Well, you don’t have to be
rude”
he said huffily, and went
away.

“The only thing wrong with this
place,” Hogan observed
sourly, “is all those pretty boys. I
dunno why they’d be lettin’
them in, but they’re always here.”

Then the truculent expression vanished from
his face as suddenly as it had come there, and he let out a shrill joyful
war-cry.

“Here she is, Tom,” he whooped.
“Here’s Cookie!”

The lights dimmed as he was speaking, giving
focus to the
single spotlight that picked up the bulbous figure of
Cookie
as she advanced to the front of the dais.

Her face was wide open in the big hearty jolly
beam that
she wore to work. Throwing inaudible answers back to the
barrage of
cheers and whistling that greeted her, she ma
neuvered her hips
around the piano and settled them on the
piano stool. Her
plowman’s hands pounded over the keyboard;
and the Saint leaned
back and prepared himself for another
parade of her merchandise.

“Good evening, everybody,” she
blared when she could be
heard: “Here we are again, with a load
of those songs your
mothers never taught you. Tonight we’ll try and top them
all—
as usual. Hold on to your pants, boys, and let’s go!”

She went.

It was a performance much like the one that
Simon had
heard the night before; only much more so. She took sex
into the sewer and brought it out again, dripping. She introduced
verses and
adlibs of the kind that are normally featured only
at stag smokers of the
rowdiest kind. But through it all she
glowed with that great gargoyle
joviality that made her every
body’s broadminded big sister; and to the
audience she had,
much as the USO would have disapproved and the YMCA
would have
turned pale with horror, it was colossal. They
hooted and roared and
clapped and beat upon the tables, de
manding more and more until her coarse
homely face was
glistening with the energy she was pouring out. And in
key
with his adopted character, and to make sure of retaining the
esteem of
Patrick Hogan, the Saint’s enthusiasm was as vocifer
ous as any.

It went on for a full threequarters of an hour
before Cookie
gave up, and then Simon suspected that her principal
reason
was plain exhaustion. He realised that she was a leech for
applause:
she soaked it up like a sponge, it fed and warmed her, and she gave it back
like a kind of transformed incandescence.
But even her
extravagant stamina had its limit.

“That’s all for now,” she gasped.
“You’ve worn me down
to a shadow.” There was a howl of
laughter. “Come back to
morrow night, and I’ll try to do
better.”

She stepped down off the platform, to be
hand-shaken and
 
slapped on the back by
a surge of admirers as the lights went
up again.
  

Patrick Hogan climbed to his feet, pushing
the table out
and almost upsetting it in his eagerness. He cupped his
hands
to his mouth and split the general hubbub with a stentorian
shout.

“Hey, Cookie.”

His coat was rucked up to his hips from the
way he had
been sitting, and as he lurched there his right hip
pocket was
only a few
inches from Simon’s face. Quite calmly
and almost mechanically the Saint’s eyes traced the outlines of the object
that bulged
in the pocket under the rough cloth—even before he moved to catch a blue-black
gleam of metal down in the slight gape of the opening.

Then he lighted a cigarette with extreme thoughtfulness,
digesting the new and uncontrovertible fact that Patrick Hogan,
that simple
spontaneous child of nature, was painting the town
with a roscoe in his
pants.

3

Cookie sat down with them, and Hogan said:
“This is me
friend Tom Simons, a foine sailor an’ an old goat with the
gals.
We
were drunk together in Murmansk-—or I was drunk any
way.”

“How do you do, Tom,” Cookie said.

“Mustn’t grumble,” said the Saint.
” ‘Ow’s yerself ?”

“Tired. And I’ve still got two shows to
do at my own place.”

“I certainly did enjoy ‘earing yer sing,
ma’m.”

“This your first visit?”

“Yus, ma’m.”

“Call me Cookie. Everyone does.”

“Yus, ma’m.”

“I bet it wont’ be his last,” Hogan
said. “Eh, Tom?”

“Not arf it won’t,” said the Saint.
“If you’ll ‘ave me. But I
dunno as I’ll ‘ave a lot more charnces on
this trip.”

Cookie took out a pack of cigarettes, offered
them, and lit
one for herself. She looked at the Saint again.

“Aren’t you staying long?” she asked
conversationally.

“Naow. Back on board by supper-time on
Tuesday, them’s
the orders—an’ we only drops the ‘ook yesterdye. Be a
s’ilor
an’ see the world—I don’t think.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Aow, it’s orl in the dye’s work, ma’m.
But I ses ter meself,
I’m goin’ ter see New York while I got the
charnce, by
crikey.”

“Where are you heading for next?”

“Through the canal an’ strite to
Shanghai. Then back from
there to Frisco. Then——
”

“Say, Cookie,” interrupted Hogan
brazenly, “how’s about
a drop of real liquor for a couple o’ good
friends who’ve dried
their throats to a cinder with cheerin’ for
ye?”

She took a deep man-sized drag at her
cigarette, flicked ash from it on to the table, and glanced at the Saint again
with
expressionless and impersonal calculation.

“I might find you a drop,” she
said.

She stood up and started away; and Patrick
Hogan nudged
the Saint with one of his broad disarming winks as they
followed her.

“What did I tell ye, Tom?”

“Cor,” said the Saint
appreciatively, “you ain’t arf a one.”
They went through a
door at the side of the service bar,
which took them into a kitchen that
might once have been
bustling and redolent with the concoction of
rare dishes for
the delectation of gourmets. Now it looked bare and drab
and
forlorn. There was no one there. A centre table was piled with
loaves of
bread and stacks of sliced ham and cheese, and littered
with crumbs
and scraps. Cases of coke and pop were pyra
mided in one corner.
The only thing on the stove was an
enormous steaming coffee pot; and a
mass of dirty cups and
plates raised sections of their anatomy,
like vestiges of a sunken
armada, out of the lake of greasy water in
the sink.

Cookie led the way into another room that opened off the
kitchen. It was so tiny that it must once have
seen duty as a
store room. Now it
barely had space for a couple of plain chairs,
a wastebasket, a battered filing cabinet, and a scarred desk
scattered with bills and papers. Kay Natello sat
at the desk, in front of an antique typewriter, pecking out an address on an
envelope with two clawlike fingers.

“Hullo, Kay,” Hogan said
familiarly. “An’ how’s me swateheart
tonight?”

“We’re just going to have a quick
one,” Cookie said. “Be a
darling and find us some glasses, Kay,
will you?”

Kay Natello got up and went out into the
kitchen, and
Cookie opened a drawer of the desk and pulled out a half-
empty
bottle of Scotch. Natello came back with four wet glasses
and put
them on the desk.

“This is Tom Simons—Kay Natello,”
Cookie said, “Tom’s
only just got in, and he’s sailing again on
Tuesday.”

“Too bad,” said Natello.

“We all ‘ave ter work, Miss,”
Simon said modestly. “At least
we got plenty o’ grub an’ a nice clean
bed ter sleep in, as long
as it don’t sink under us.”

Cookie finished pouring four powerful slugs, and picked up
one of them.

“Well, boys,” she said. “Down the hatch.”

The drinks duly went down the hatch.

“You were sailing soon, too, weren’t
you, Pat?” asked
Natello.

“Next week. Off to South Africa, India,
Singapore, and back the same way.”
    

“We’ll miss you,” said Cookie.
“What about you, Tom—
are you going to England?”

“Shanghai,” said the Saint, wiping
his droopy moustache.
“Through the canal. An’ back to
Frisco.”

Cookie poured herself another drink, and
downed it at one
gulp
like a dose of medicine. Perhaps that was what it was for
her.

“I’ve got to leave you,” she
announced. “Got my next show
to do.”

She helped herself to another small jolt, as
an afterthought,
just
in case she had made a mistake and cheated herself on the
last one. The effect on her was not even
noticeable. Her small
piggy eyes
summarised the Saint with the quick covert shrewd
ness of an adept Fiftysecond-Street head waiter
taking the
measure of a new customer. She said with perfectly timed
spontaneity: “Look, why don’t you boys come
over to the Cellar
when you get through
here? On the house.”