“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.
Lucia
Simon Templar might easily have passed the “hotel.” For reasons known only to itself, it stood outside the town, perched aloofly on a stony slope that rose above the rudimentary road. But as he went by he saw the girl on the veranda, and admitted to himself that he was thirsty. He climbed the rough path and unslung his pack in the shade.