“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.