"Just to prove I knew what I was doing? I expected that."
Sir Ambrose looked at him suspiciously.
"I wish I knew what you wanted that thing for," he said. "Even my uncle only wanted us to get a thousand for it, but I thought I'd double it for luck. Two thousand couldn't be much more impossible than one." He heaved with chin-quivering mirth. "Well, my dear sir, if you can make a profit on two thousand, I shan't complain. Ho, ho, ho, ho! Have a drink."
"Sometimes," said the Saint quite affably, "I wonder why there's no law classifying men like you as vermin, and authorizing you to be sprayed with DDT on sight."
He routed out Peter Quentin before going home that night, and uttered the same philosophy to him — even more affably. The brass Buddha sat on a table beside his bed when he turned in, and he blew it a kiss before he switched out the light and sank into the dreamless sleep of a contented corsair.
He paraded at the Savoy at twelve-thirty the next day.
At two o'clock Patricia Holm found him in the grill room.
Simon beckoned the waiter who had just poured out his coffee, and asked for another cup.
"Well," he said, "where's Peter?"
"His girl friend stopped in a shop window to look at some stockings, so I came on." Her eyebrows were faintly questioning. "I thought you were lunching with that American."