"I didn't mean it like that," protested the girl frantically. "I mean that after all, when we don't need the money — You said you were thinking of running over to Paris for a week —"
"We can go via Amsterdam, and sell the Star of Mandalay en route," said the Saint calmly. "You lie in your teeth, my sweetheart. You meant that the Star of Mandalay was too much of a problem for me and I'd only get in a jam, if I tried for it. Well, as a matter of fact, I've been thinking of having a dart at it for some time."
Peter Quentin drank deeply of the Chambertin to steady his nerves.
"You haven't been thinking anything of the sort," he said. "I'll withdraw everything I said. You were just taking on a dare."
Simon ordered himself a second slice of melon, and leaned back with his most seraphic and exasperating smile.
"Have I," he inquired blandly, "ever told you my celebrated story about a bob-tailed ptarmigan named Alphonse, who lived in sin with a couple of duck-billed platypi in the tundras of Siberia? Alphonse, who suffered from asthma and was a believer in Christian Science…"
He completed his narrative at great length, refusing to be interrupted; and they knew that the die was cast. When once Simon Templar had made up his mind it was impossible to argue with him. If he didn't proceed blandly to talk you down with one of his most fatuous and irrelevant anecdotes, he would listen politely to everything you had to say, agree with you thoroughly, and carry on exactly as he had announced his intentions from the beginning; which wasn't helpful. And he had made up his mind, on one of his mad impulses, that the Star of Mandalay was due for a change of ownership. It was not a very large stone, but it was reputed to be flawless; and it was valued at ten thousand pounds. Simon reckoned that it would be worth five thousand pounds to him in Van Roeper's little shop in Amsterdam, and five thousand pounds was a sum of money that he could find a home for at any time.
But he said nothing about that to Mrs. Dempster-Craven when he saw her for the third time and spoke to her for the first. He was extremely polite and apologetic. He had good reason to be, for the rakish Hirondel which he was driving had collided with Mrs. Dempster-Craven's Rolls Royce in Hyde Park, and the glossy symmetry of the Rolls Royce's rear elevation had been considerably impaired.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said. "Your chauffeur pulled up rather suddenly, and my hand-brake cable broke when I tried to stop."
His hand-brake cable had certainly divided itself in the middle, and the frayed ends had been produced for the chauffeur's inspection; but no one was to know that Simon had filed it through before he started out.