Señor Saint Read Free Page A

was overblown and mushy. Her black hair was lank and greasy, her nose broad and flat, her painted mouth coarse and thick. Even under a heavy layer of powder that was several shades too light, her complexion showed dark and horribly ravaged with pock-marks. She smiled, showing several gold teeth.
    “I am Consuelo,” she said in that magical voice.
    Somehow the Saint managed to keep all reaction out of his face, or hoped he did.
    “I am looking for an American, a Senor Yarn,” he said. “He wrote a letter saying that one should come here and ask for you.”
    Her eyes flickered over him oddly.
    “Si,” she said. “I remember. I will take you to him. Un momentito.”
    She went to the bar and spoke briefly to the bartender, who scowled and shrugged. She came back.
    “Come.”
    Simon put down his glass and went out with her.
    The sidewalk was so narrow that there was barely room for them both, and when they met any other walkers there was a subtle contest of bluff to decide which party should give way.
    “It was a long time ago that he told me to expect someone,” she said. “Why did you take so long?”
    “His letter took a long time. And there were other delays.”
    “You have the letter with you?”
    “It was not written to me. I was sent by the person to whom he wrote.”
    Some instinct of delicacy compelled him to evade a more exact naming of the person. He said, cautiously: “You know what it was about?”
    “I know nothing.”
    Her high heels clicked a tattoo of fast short steps, hobbled by a skirt that was too tight from hip to knee.
    “I have never met Seńor Yarn,” he said. “What kind of a man is he?”
    She stopped, looking up to search his face with a kind of vehement suddenness.
    “He is a good man. The best I have ever known. I hope you are good for him!”
    “I hope so too,” said the Saint gently.
    They walked on, zigzagging through alleys that grew steadily narrower and darker and more noisome; but the Saint, whose sense of direction could be switched on like a recording machine, never lost track of a turn. The people who shared the streets with them became fewer and vaguer shadows. Life went indoors, and barricaded itself against the night behind shutters through which only an occasional streak of yellow light leaked out. It revealed itself only as a muffled grumbling voice, a sharp ripple of shrill laughter, the wail of a baby, the faint tinny sound of a cheap radio or phonograph; and against that dim sound track the clatter of Consuelo’s heels seemed to ring out like blows on an anvil. If the Saint had not stepped silently from incurable habit, he would have found himself doing it with a self-conscious impulse to minimize his intrusion. If he could conceivably have picked up Consuelo, or any of the other girls, in the Cantina de las Flores, without an introduction, and had found himself being led where he was for any other reason, he would have been tense with suspicion and wishing for the weight of a gun in his pocket. But he did not think he had anything to fear.
    When she stopped, a faint tang of sea smells penetrating the hodgepodge of less natural aromas told his nostrils that they were near another part of the waterfront. The shack that loomed beside them was different only in details of outline from the others around it-a shanty of crumbling plaster and decaying timbers, with a rambling roof line which could consist of nothing but an accumulation of innumerable inadequate repairs.
    “Here,” she said.
    She opened the cracked plank door, and Simon followed her in.
    The whole house was only one little room. There was a brass bedstead against one wall, with a faded chintz curtain across the corner beside it which might have concealed some sort of sanitary facilities. In another corner, there was an ancient oil cooking stove, and a bare counter board with a chipped enamel basin. On shelves above the counter, there were cheap dishes and utensils, and a few canned foods. Clothing