Introduction
Before you have ploughed very far into this episode, it is bound to become manifest even to the most obtuse of you that you are reading a sort of sequel to the one before. So I am going to take the edge off it and admit it before you start. But this was not anything I planned. There was a lapse of many years between the writing of the stories. The fact that the same girl turned out to be involved was almost a surprise even to me. But the story called for a character that the Saint had matched wits with before, and while I suppose it wouldn’t have been too difficult to invent one, it seemed a lot simpler to dig one out of the Saint’s recorded past, where the previous encounter was fully documented. This is one of the sordid advantages of writing such an unconscionable number of stories. You don’t have to keep on creating new characters indefinitely. The time comes when you only have to reach back into the half-forgotten past, pick up some personality that once flashed across your screen, and figure what might have happened to him or her (and how tediously grammatical I must be getting) since the earlier encounter. If any aspirant authors among you want to exploit this simplified system of story-concocting, I bequeath it to you gladly with my blessing. All you have to do is to put in fifteen or more creative years, and from then on everything is on the house. — Leslie Charteris
“ Wine, that maketh glad the heart of man,” quoted Simon Templar, holding his glass appreciatively to the light. “The Psalmist would have had things to talk about.”
“It would have been a love match,” said Lieutenant Wendel, like a load of gravel.
“Up to a point,” Simon agreed. “But then he goes on: And oil to make him a cheerful countenance. Here we start asking questions. Is the prescription for internal or external application? Are we supposed to swallow the oil, or rub it on the face?... I am, of course, quoting the Revised Version. The King James has it Oil to make his face to shine, but the revisers must have had some reason for the change. Perhaps they wanted to restore some element of ambiguity in the original, dividing the plug equally between mayonnaise and Max Factor.”
The detective stared at him woodenly.
“I’ve wondered a lot of things about you, Saint. But what a guy like you wants with that quiz stuff is beyond me.”
Simon smiled.
“A man in my business can never know too much. A brigand has to be just a little ahead of the field — because the field isn’t just a lot of horses trying to win a race with him, but a pack of hounds trying to run him down. Quite a lot of my phenomenal success,” he said modestly, “is due to my memory for unconsidered trifles.”
Wendel grunted.
They sat in a booth in Arnaud’s, which Simon had chosen over the claims of such other temples of New Orleans cuisine as Antoine’s or Galatoire’s because the oak beams and subdued lights seemed to offer a more propitious atmosphere for a meal which he wanted to keep peaceful.
For Simon Templar was in some practical respects a devout lover of peace, and frequently tried very hard to vindicate the first person who had nicknamed him the Saint, in spite of all the legends of tumult and mayhem that had collected about that apparently incongruous sobriquet. Because a modern buccaneer in the perfect exploit would cause no commotion at all, even if this would make singularly dull reading; it is only when something goes wrong that the fireworks go off and the plot thickens with alarums and excursions, hues and cries, and all the uproar and excitement that provide such entertainment for the reader.
“Besides which,” Simon continued at leisure, “I like civilized amenities with my crime — or wine. Both of them have a finer flavor for being enriched with background.” He raised his glass again, passing it under his nostrils and admiring its ruby tint. “I take this wine, and to me it’s much more than alcoholic grape juice. I think of the particular breed of grapes it was made from, and the dry sunny slopes where they ripened. I think of all the lore of wine-making. I think of the great names of wine, that you could chant like an anthem — Chambertin, Romanée-Conti, Richebourg, Vougeot... I think of great drinkers — buveurs très illustres, as Rabelais addresses us — of August the Strong of Saxony, who fathered three hundred and sixty-five bastards and drank himself to death on Imperial Tokay, doubtless from celebrating all their birthdays — or of the Duke of Clarence who was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine... Or, perhaps, I might think of pearls...”
Wendel suddenly stiffened into stillness.
“I was wondering how to bring pearls into it.”
“Did you ever hear that wine would dissolve pearls?” asked the Saint. “If you collected these items, you’d have read about how the decadent Roman emperors, in their lush moments, would dissolve pearls in the banquet wine, just to prove that money was no object. And then there’s a story about Cleopatra’s big party to Caesar, when she offered him wine with her own hands, and dropped a priceless pearl in his goblet. Now if you knew—”
“What I want to know,” Wendel said, “is how much you’re interested in Lady Offchurch’s pearls.”
The Saint sighed.
“You’re such a materialist,” he complained. “I arrive in New Orleans an innocent and happy tourist, and I’ve hardly checked into a hotel when you burst in on me, flashing your badge and demanding to know what the hell I want in town. I do my best to convince you that I’m only here to soak up the atmosphere of your historic city and incidentally absorb some of your superb cooking with it. I even persuade you to have dinner with me and get this epicurean picnic off to a good start. We are just starting to relax and enjoy ourselves, with poetic excursions into history and legend, when suspicion rears its ugly head again and you practically accuse me of planning to swipe some wretched dowager’s jewels.”
“I’ll go further than that,” Wendel rasped, with the raw edges of uncertainty in his voice. “I’m wondering what made you choose this place to eat in.”
“It seemed like a good idea.”
“It wasn’t because you expected Lady Offchurch to choose it too.”
“Of course not.”
“So it’s just a coincidence that she happens to be here.”
Simon raised unhurried eyebrows.
“Behind you, on your left,” Wendel said, trap-mouthed.
The Saint drank some wine, put down his glass, and looked casually over his shoulder.
He did not need to have Lady Offchurch more specifically pointed out to him, for her picture had been in the papers not long before, and the story with it was the sort of thing that made him remember faces. The late Lord Offchurch had, until his recent demise, been the British Government’s official “adviser” to a certain maharajah, and this maharajah had bestowed upon the departing widow, as a trivial token of his esteem, a necklace of matched pink pearls valued at a mere $100,000. Lady Offchurch had provided good copy on this to receptive reporters in Hollywood, where she had been suitably entertained by the English Colony on what was supposed to be her way “home.” She had also expressed her concern over the fate of an Independent India, abandoned to the self-government of a mob of natives which even the most altruistic efforts of the British raj had been unable in two centuries of rule to lift above the level of a herd of cattle — except, of course, for such distinguished types as the dear maharajah.
She was a thin, bony, tight-lipped woman with a face like a well-bred horse, and Simon could construct the rest of her character without an interview. There was no need even to look at her for long, and as a matter of fact, he didn’t.
What kept his head turned for quite a few seconds more than identification called for was Lady Offchurch’s companion — a girl half her age, with golden hair and gray eyes and a face that must have launched a thousand clichés.
“Well?” Lieutenant Wendel’s voice intruded harshly, and Simon turned back. “Beautiful,” he said.
“Yeah,” Wendel said. “For a hundred grand, they should be.”
“Oh, the pearls,” Simon said innocently. “I didn’t notice. I was talking about her daughter.”
Wendel squinted past him.
“She doesn’t have a daughter. I guess that’s just a friend. Maybe came with her from Hollywood — she’s pretty enough.” His eyes snapped back to Simon with a scowl. “Now quit tryin’ to head me off again. When I read this Offchurch was in town, I naturally start wondering if any big operators have checked in about the same time. I’m a lazy guy, see, and it’s a lot easier to stop something happening than try to catch a crook after he’s done it... And the first register I go through, I see your name.”
“Which proves I must be up to something, because if I wasn’t planning a Saint job I’d obviously use an alias.”
“It wouldn’t be out of line with the kind of nerve I hear you’ve got.”
“Thank you.”
“So I’m tellin’ you. I’m having Lady Offchurch watched twenty-four hours a day, and if my men ever see you hanging around they’ll throw you in the can. And if those pearls ever show up missing, whether anybody saw you or not, you better be ready with all the answers.”
Simon Templar smiled, and it was like the kindling of a light in his keen, dark, reckless face. His blue eyes danced with an audacity that only belonged with cloaks and swords.
“Now you’re really making it sound interesting.”
Wendel’s face reddened.
“Yeah? Well, I’m warning you.”
“You’re tempting me. I wish policemen wouldn’t keep doing that.” Simon beckoned a waiter. “Coffee — and how about some crêpes Suzette?”
The detective bunched his napkin on the table.
“No, thank you. Let me have my check — separately.”
“But I invited you.”
“I can take care of myself, Saint. I hope you can too. Just don’t forget, you had your warning.”
“I won’t forget,” said the Saint softly.
He lighted a cigarette after the police officer had gone, and thoughtfully stirred sugar into his coffee.
He was not affronted by Wendel’s ungraciousness — that sort of reaction was almost conventional, and he hadn’t exactly exerted himself to avoid it. But it was a pity, he thought, that so many policemen in their most earnest efforts to avert trouble were prone to throw down challenges which no self-respecting picaroon could ignore. Because it happened to be perfectly true that the Saint had entered New Orleans without a single design upon Lady Offchurch or her pearls, and if it was inept of the law to draw his attention to them, it was even more tactless to combine the reminder with what virtually amounted to a dare.
Even so (the Saint assured himself), his fundamental strength and nobility of character might still have been able to resist the provocation if Destiny hadn’t thrown in the girl with the golden hair...
He didn’t look at her again until Lady Offchurch passed his table, on her way to the special conveniences of the restaurant, and then he turned again and met the gray eyes squarely and timelessly.
The girl looked back at him, and her face was as smooth and translucent as the maharajah’s pearls, and as brilliantly expressionless.
Then she lowered her eyes to a book of matches in front of her, and wrote inside the cover with a pencil from her bag.
The Saint’s gaze left her again, and didn’t even return when a passing waiter placed a match booklet somewhat ostentatiously in front of him.
He opened the cover and read:
27 Bienville Apts. St Ann Street at 10:30
Lady Offchurch was returning to her table. Simon Templar paid his check, put the matches in his pocket, and strolled out to pass the time at the Absinthe House.
This was the way things happened to him, and he couldn’t fight against fate.
So after a while he was strolling down St Ann Street, until he found the Bienville. He went through an archway into a cobble-stoned courtyard, and there even more than in the narrow streets of the Vieux Carré it was like dropping back into another century, where cloaks and swords had a place. Around him, like a stage setting, was a chiaroscuro of dim lights and magnolia and wrought-iron balconies that seemed to have been planned for romantic and slightly illicit assignations, and he could make no complaint about the appropriateness of his invitation.
He found an outside stairway that led up to a door beside which a lantern hung over the number 27, and she opened the door before he touched the knocker.
He couldn’t help the trace of mockery in his bow as he said, “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” she said calmly, and walked back across the living room. The front door opened straight into it. There were glasses and bottles on a sideboard in the dining alcove across the room. As she went there she said, “What would you like to drink?”
“Brandy, I think, for this occasion,” he said.
She brought it to him in a tulip glass, and he sniffed and sipped analytically.
“Robin, isn’t it?” he remarked. “I remember — you had a natural taste.” His eyes ran up and down her slender shape with the same candid analysis. “I guess there’s only one thing you’ve changed. In Montreal, you were pretending to be Judith Northwade. What name are you using here?”
“Jeannine Roger. It happens to be my own.”
“A good name, anyway. Does it also belong to the last man I saw you with?”
For an instant she was almost puzzled.
“Oh, him. My God, no.”
“Then he isn’t lurking in the next room, waiting to cut loose with a sawed-off shotgun.”
“I haven’t seen him for months, and I couldn’t care less if it was years.”
Simon tasted his brandy again, even more carefully.
“Then — are you relying on some subtle Oriental poison, straight from the pharmacopoeia of Sherlock Holmes?”
“No.”
“This gets even more interesting. In Montreal—”
“In Montreal, I tried to pull a fast one on you.”
“To be exact, you set me up to pull a job for you, and I was damn nearly the sucker who fell for it.”
“Only instead of that you made a sucker out of me.”
“And now all of a sudden I’m forgiven?”
She shrugged.
“How can I squawk? I started the double-cross, so how can I kick if it backfired? So now we’re even.”
Simon sat on the arm of a chair.
“This is almost fascinating,” he said. “So you sent me that invitation so we could kiss again and be friends?”
A faint flush touched her cheekbones.
“When you saw me with Lady Offchurch, I knew I’d have to deal with you sooner or later. Why kid myself? So I thought I’d get it over with.”
“You thought I was after the same boodle.”
“If you weren’t before, you would be now.”
“Well, what’s the proposition?”
“Why don’t we really team up this time?”
Simon put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match.
“It’s a nice idea,” he said. “However, you may be overlooking something. How do you see the split?”
“Fifty-fifty, of course.”
“That’s the trouble.”
“That’s how it has to be. You can’t turn it down. If you can louse me up, I can do the same to you.”
The Saint smiled.
“That isn’t the point. You’re forgetting something. Remember when you were the damsel in distress, and I was all set up to be the knight in shining armor? You had the right idea then.”
“You hijacked me,” she said sultrily, “like any other crook.
“But I didn’t keep the spoils, like any other crook, he said imperturbably. “I found out how much Northwade had under paid that young inventor, and I sent him the difference — anonymously. Minus, of course, my ten-per-cent commission.”
She was not quite incredulous.
“I’ve heard stories like that about you, but I didn’t believe them.”
“They happen to be true. Call me crazy, but that’s my racket... Now in this case, it seems to me that most of the value of that necklace ought to go back to the poor bloody Indians who were sweated by the maharajah to pay for it while the British Government, as represented by Lord and Lady Offchurch, were benevolently sipping tea in the palace. So if you helped, I might let you have another ten per cent for yourself, but that’s all. And you can’t turn it down. Don’t forget you can louse me up, I can do the same to you.”
She sat down in another chair and looked upwards at him under lowered brows, and her gray eyes had the darkness of storm clouds.
“You certainly make it tough — stranger,” she said, and her smile was thin.
“Can’t I sell you a good cause, just once?”
“I think your cause stinks, but I have to buy it. You don’t give me any choice. Damn you.”
The Saint laughed. He crossed to her and held out his hand.
“Okay, Jeannine.”
She put her cool fingers firmly in his, and he knew, he knew quite surely, that the handshake was as false as the way her eyes cleared. The certainty was so real that it was a fleeting chill inside him, and he knew that now they were committed to a duel in which no tricks could be ruled out. But his gaze matched hers for frankness and straightforwardness, and he said, “Well now, pardner, let’s know what track you were on.”
“I was on the Coast when she arrived. I was working out on a producer. He took me to a party that she was at. I knew I couldn’t risk her in Hollywood, but I found out that New Orleans was the first place she wanted to stop over in on her way East. So right away this was my home town. I took the next plane here and got hold of this apartment, and don’t ask how. Then I wired her the address and said I was sorry I’d been called away suddenly but she must look me up and let me show her the town. Then I spent my time with a guidebook finding out what to show her.”
“As an inspirational worker, it’s an honor to know you,” Simon murmured approvingly. “Of course, you can’t belong to an old Creole family, because you can’t introduce her around. So what are you — an artist?”
“A writer. I’m getting material for a novel.”
“Which the producer was interested in.”
“Exactly.”
“And how did you figure the job?”
She was silent for a few moments, her eyes turned to a corner but not looking at anything.
“I’ve been able to get the necklace in my hands long enough to count the pearls while I was admiring them, and take a wax impression of one of them for size. I’m having an imitation made in New York. As soon as it gets here, I’ve only got to make the switch.”
Simon showed his respect.
“You can write scripts for me, any time,” he said.
“Now tell me your angle,” she responded.
“Darling, I never had one.”
She stared.
“What?”
“I didn’t even know Lady Offchurch was here, until that guy I was having dinner with pointed her out and practically dared me to steal her necklace. He just happens to be the local Gestapo.”
Gun metal glinted in the gray eyes.
“Why, you chiseling...” Then she laughed a little. “So you do it to me again. Why do you always have to be bad news, stranger? It could have been so much fun.”
“It still could be,” he said impudently, but she stood up and slipped past him towards the sideboard. He strolled lazily after her and said, “By the way, when do you expect to get that imitation?”
“Maybe the day after tomorrow.”
And again he felt that tenuous cold touch of disbelief, but he kept it to himself, and held out his glass for a refill.
“On account of Wendel — that’s the name of the gendarme — I’d better not risk being seen with you in public.” He looked across the alcove into the kitchen, and said as the idea struck him, “Tell you what — if we can’t eat out together, we can still dine. I’ll bring some stuff in tomorrow and start fixing. I forgot to tell you before, but I’m as good as any chef in this town.”
“You just got a job,” she said.
He went back to his hotel in a haze of thought. The cool drafts of skepticism which had whispered around him began to reward him with the exhilaration of walking on the thin ice which they created. He was a fool for danger, and he always would be.
This was danger, as real as a triggered guillotine. It was true that she had no choice about accepting his terms — out loud. But it wasn’t in keeping with her character as he knew it to accept them finally. And she had been just a little too evasive at one point and too acquiescent at another. It didn’t balance. But when the catch would show was something he could only wait for.
He went to her apartment the next afternoon, laden with the brown paper bags of marketing. She made him a drink in the kitchen while he unpacked and went to work with quick and easy efficiency.
“What are we having?”
“Oxtail.” He smiled at her lift of expression. “And don’t despise it. It was always destined for something rarer than soup.”
He was slicing onions and carrots.
“These — browned in butter. Then we make a bed of them in a casserole, with plenty of chopped parsley and other herbs. Then, the joints packed neatly in, like the crowd at a good fire. And then, enough red wine to cover it, and let it soak for hours.”
“When does it cook?”
“When you come home tonight. I’ll drop in for a nightcap, and we’ll watch it get started. Then it cools overnight, and tomorrow we take off the grease and finish it... You’d better let me have a key, in case you’re late.”
“Why don’t you just move in?” He grinned.
“I guess you forgot to invite me. But I’ll manage.” He trimmed fat from the joints, while the frying pan hissed gently with liquescent butter. “Did the mailman deliver?”
“It didn’t come today.”
And once again it was like a Geiger counter clicking to the intrusion of invisible radioactivity, the way his intuition tingled deep down at her reply.
He said, pleasantly, “I hope you really do know as much about me as you indicated once.”
“How do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t want you to be worrying about whether I’m going to double-cross you again. I made a deal with you, and when I make deals they stay made. It’s only when someone else starts dealing from the bottom that all bets are off.”
“Obviously,” she said, with cool indifference.
She let him take a key to the apartment when he left, and that alone told him to save himself the trouble of returning for a search while she was out. If there was anything she didn’t want him to find, it would certainly not be there.
He had taken routine precautions against being followed when he went to the Bienville, but as he turned into the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone the chunky figure of Lieutenant Wendel rose from an armchair to greet him.
“Had a nice afternoon, Saint?”
“Very nice, thank you,” Simon replied calmly, and the detective’s face began to darken.
“I thought I warned you to stay away from Lady Offchurch.”
The Saint raised his eyebrows.
“I wasn’t aware that I’d been annoying her. She is at the St Charles, which is very grand and metropolitan, but the French quarter is good enough for me. I can’t help it if our hotels are only a few blocks apart. Perhaps you ought to have the city enlarged.”
“I’m talking about this gal Jeannine Roger. What are you cooking up with her?”
“Oxtails,” said the Saint truthfully.
Lieutenant Wendel did not seem to be the type to appreciate a simple and straightforward answer. In fact, for some reason it appeared to affect him in much the same way as having his necktie flipped up under his nose. His eyes became slightly congested, and he grasped the Saint’s arm with a hand that could have crumbled walnuts.
“Listen, mister,” he said, with crunching self-control. “Just because I spotted you right off didn’t mean I figured my job was done. When I found Lady Offchurch was going around with this Roger twist, I had her investigated too. And it comes right back from Washington that she’s got a record as long as your arm. So I put a man on to watch her. And whaddaya know, first thing I hear is that you’re spending time over in her apartment.”
Simon Templar’s stomach felt as if a cold weight had been planted in it, but not the flicker of a muscle acknowledged the sensation. As though the grip on his arm hadn’t been there at all, he conveyed a cigarette to his mouth and put a light to it.
“Thanks for the tip, chum,” he said gravely. “I just happened to pick her up in a restaurant, and she looked like fun. It only shows you, a guy can’t be too careful. Why, she might have stolen something from me!”
The detective made a noise something like a cement mixer choking on a rock.
“What you’d better do is get it through your head that you aren’t getting away with anything in this town. This is one caper that’s licked before it starts. You’re washed up, Saint, so get smart while you’ve got time.”
Simon nodded.
“I’ll certainly tell the girl we can’t go on seeing each other. A man in my position—”
“A man in your position,” Wendel said, “ought to pack his bags and be out of town tomorrow while he has the chance.”
“I’ll think that over,” Simon said seriously. “Are you free for dinner again tonight? — we might make it a farewell feast.”
He was not surprised that the offer was discourteously rejected, and went on to the bar with plenty to occupy his mind.
One question was whether Wendel would be most likely to challenge Jeannine Roger openly, as he had challenged the Saint, or whether in the slightly different circumstances he would try to expose her to Lady Offchurch, or whether he would pull out of the warning business altogether and go out for blood.
The other question was whether Jeannine knew the score already, and what was brewing in her own elusive mind.
At any rate, he had nothing to lose now by going openly to the Bienville, and he deliberately did that, after a leisured savoring of oysters Rockefeller and gumbo filé at Antoine’s, while the young officer who was following him worried over a bowl of onion soup and his expense account. The same shadow almost gave him a personal escort into the courtyard off St Ann Street, and Simon thought it only polite to turn back and wave to him as he went up the outside stairs to Number 27.
From the window, he watched the shadow confer with another shape that emerged from an obscure recess of the patio. Then after a while the shadow went away, but the established watcher sidled back into his nook and stayed.
Simon crossed the living room and peered down from a curtained window on the other side. The back overlooked an alley which was more black than dark, so that it was some time before the glimmering movement of a luminous wrist-watch dial betrayed the whereabouts of the sentinel who lurked patiently there among the garbage cans.
Simon put on the kitchen lights and inspected his casserole. He added a little more wine, lighted the oven, and put the dish in. He hummed a gentle tune to himself as he poured a drink in the dinette and settled down in the living room to wait.
The apartment was very effectively covered — so effectively that only a mouse could possibly have entered or left it unobserved. So effectively that it had all the uncomfortable earmarks of a trap...
The question now was — what was the trap set for, and how did it work?
It was a quarter to midnight when the girl came in. He heard her quick feet on the stone steps outside, but he only moved to refill his glass while her key was turning in the lock. She came in like a light spring breeze that brought subtler scents than magnolia with it.
“Hullo,” she said, and it seemed to him that her voice was very gay. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”
“Just long enough. There’s a bolt on the inside of the door — you’d better use it,” he said, without looking up. He heard the bolt slam, after a pause of stillness, and turned with an extra glass in his other hand. “Here’s your nightcap, baby. You may need it.”
He thought of a foolish phrase as he looked at her — “with the wind and the rain in your hair.” Of course there was no rain, and her hair was only just enough out of trim to be interesting, but she had that kind of young, excited look, with her cheeks faintly freshened by the night and her gray eyes bright and arrested. The incongruity of it hurt him, and he said brusquely, “We don’t have any time to waste, so don’t let’s waste it.”
“What’s happened?”
“The joint is pinched,” he said bluntly. “The Gestapo didn’t stop at me — they checked on you too, since you were Lady Offchurch’s mysterious pal, and they know all about you. Wendel told me. They’ve got both sides of the building covered. Look out the windows if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said slowly. “But — why?”
“Because Wendel means to catch somebody with the goods on them.”
It was only an involuntary and static reaction, the whitening of her knuckles on the hand that held her purse, but it was all he needed. He said, “You had the imitation necklace today. You pulled the switch tonight. You made a deal, but you kept your fingers crossed.”
“No,” she said.
Now there were heavy feet stumping methodically up the stairway outside.
“You were followed every inch of the way back. They know you haven’t ditched the stuff. They know it has to be here, and they know you can’t get it out. What are you going to do — throw it out of a window? There’s a man watching on both sides. Hide it? They may have to tear the joint to shreds, but they’ll find it. They’ve got you cold.”
“No,” she said, and her face was haggard with guilt.
A fist pounded on the door.
“All right, darling,” said the Saint. “You had your chance. Give me your bag.”
“No.”
The fist pounded again.
“You fool,” he said savagely, in a voice that reached no further than her ears. “What do you think that skin we love to touch would be like after ten years in the pen?”
He took the purse from her hand and said, “Open the door.” Then he went into the kitchen.
Lieutenant Wendel made his entrance with the ponderous elaboration of a man who knew that he had the last ounce of authority behind him and nothing on earth to hurry for. Certainty smoothed down the buzz-saw edges of his voice and invested him with the steam-roller impermeability of an entire government bureau on two feet.
“I’m from the Police Department, Miss Roger. I’m sure Mr Templar has told you about me. I’ve come to trouble you for Lady Offchurch’s pearl necklace.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Of course not.” His confidence was almost paternal. “However, it hasn’t gone out by the front since you came in, and I don’t think it’s gone out by the back. We’ll just make sure.”
He crossed the room heavily, opened a window, and whistled.
This was the moment that Simon Templar chose to come back.
“Why, hullo, Lieutenant,” he murmured genially. “What are you doing — rehearsing Romeo and Juliet for the Police Follies?”
Wendel waved to the night and turned back from the window.
“Ah, there you are, Mr Templar. I knew you were here, of course.” His eyes fastened on the purse that swung negligently in Simon’s hand. “This may save us a lot of trouble — excuse me.”
He grabbed the bag away, sprung the catch, and spilled the contents clattering on the dining table.
After a few seconds the Saint said, “Would anyone mind telling me what this is all about?”
“All right,” Wendel said grimly. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. The necklace.”
“The last time I saw it,” Jeannine Roger said, “it was on Lady Offchurch’s neck.”
The detective set his jaw.
“I work regular hours, Miss Roger, and I don’t want to be kept up all night. I may as well tell you that I talked to Lady Offchurch before you met her this evening. I arranged for her to give one of my men a signal if you had been suspiciously anxious to handle the necklace at any time while you were together. She gave that signal when she said good night to you. That gives me grounds to believe that while you were handling the necklace you exchanged it for a substitute. I think the original is in this apartment now, and if it is, we’ll find it. Now if one of you hands it over and saves me a lot of trouble, I mightn’t feel quite so tough as if I had to work for it.”
“Meaning,” said the Saint, “that we mightn’t have to spend quite so much of our youth on the rock pile?”
“Maybe.”
The Saint took his time over lighting a cigarette.
“All my life,” he said, “I’ve been allergic to hard labor. And it’s especially bad” — he glanced at the girl — “for what the radio calls those soft, white, romantic hands. In fact, I can’t think of any pearls that would be worth it — particularly when you don’t even get to keep the pearls... So — I’m afraid there ain’t going to be no poils.”
“You’re nuts!” Wendel exploded. “Don’t you know when you’re licked?”
“Not till you show me,” said the Saint peaceably. “Let’s examine the facts. Miss Roger handled the necklace. Tomorrow a jeweler may say that the string that Lady Offchurch still has is a phony. Well, Lady Offchurch can’t possibly swear that nobody else ever touched that rope of oyster fruit. Well, the substitution might have been made anywhere, anytime, by anyone — even by a chiseling maharajah. What’s the only proof you could use against Jeannine? Nothing short of finding a string of genuine pink pearls in her possession. And that’s something you can never do.”
“No?” Wendel barked. “Well, if I have to put this whole building through a sieve, and the two of you with it—”
“You’ll never find a pearl,” Simon stated.
He made the statement with such relaxed confidence that a clammy hand began to caress the detective’s spine, neutralizing logic with its weird massage, and poking skeletal fingers into hypersensitive nerves.
“No?” Wendel repeated, but his voice had a frightful uncertainty.
Simon picked up a bottle and modestly replenished his glass.
“The trouble with you,” he said, “is that you never learned to listen. Last night at dinner, if you remember, we discoursed on various subjects, all of which I’m sure you had heard before, and yet all you could think of was that I was full of a lot of highfalutin folderol, while I was trying to tell you that in our business a man couldn’t afford to not know anything. And when I told you this afternoon that Jeannine and I were cooking up oxtails, you only thought I was trying to be funny, instead of remembering among other things that oxtails are cooked in wine.”
The detective lifted his head, and his nostrils dilated with sudden apperception.
“So when you came in here,” said the Saint, “you’d have remembered those other silly quotes I mentioned — about Cleopatra dissolving pearls in wine for Caesar—”
“Simon — no!” The girl’s voice was almost a scream.
“I’m afraid, yes,” said the Saint sadly. “What Cleopatra could do, I could do better — for a face that shouldn’t be used for launching ships. “
Lieutenant Wendel moved at last, rather like a wounded carabao struggling from its wallow, and the sound that came from his throat was not unlike the cry that might have been wrung from the vocal cords of the same stricken animal.
He plunged into the kitchen and jerked open the oven door. After burning his fingers twice, he took pot holders to pull out the dish and spill its contents into the stoppered sink.
Simon watched him, with more exquisite pain, while he ran cold water and pawed frantically through the debris. After all, it would have been a dish fit for a queen, but all Wendel came up with was a loop of thread, about two feet long.
“How careless of the butcher,” said the Saint, “to leave that in.”
Lieutenant Wendel did not take the apartment apart. He would have liked to, but not for investigative reasons. For a routine search he had no heart at all. The whole picture was too completely historically founded and cohesive to give him any naïve optimism about his prospects of upsetting it.
“I hate to suggest such a thing to a respectable officer,” said the Saint insinuatingly, “but maybe you shouldn’t even let Lady Offchurch think that her necklace was switched. With a little tact, you might be able to convince her that you scared the criminals away and she won’t be bothered any more. It may be years before she finds out, and then no one could prove that it happened here. It isn’t as if you were letting us get away with anything.”
“What you’re getting away with should go down in history,” Wendel said with burning intensity. “But I swear to God that if either of you is still in town tomorrow morning, I’m going to frame you for murder.”
The door slammed behind him, and Simon smiled at the girl with rather regretful philosophy.
“Well,” he said, “it was one way of giving those pearls back to the Indians. One day you’ll learn to stop being so smart, Jeannine. Can I offer you a ride out of town?”
“Whichever way you’re going,” she said with incandescent fascination, “I hope I’ll always be heading the other way.”
It was too bad, Simon Templar reflected. Too bad that she had to be so beautiful and so treacherous. And too bad, among other things, that his crusade for the cultivation of more general knowledge seemed to make so few converts. If only there were not so much ignorance and superstition in the world, both Wendel and Jeannine Roger would have known, as he did, that the story of pearls being dissolved in wine was strictly a fable, without a grain of scientific truth... Nevertheless, the pearls in his pocket were very pleasant to caress as he nursed his car over the Huey Long Bridge and turned west, towards Houston.