"Countess, you must introduce us!"
"I've been dying to meet him!"
The countess' lips curled.
"Of course, my dears," she said, with the sugariness of arsenic. "How rude of me!" She performed the introductions. "Lady Instock was telling me only this morning that you could steal anything from her," she added spikily.
"Anything," confirmed Lady Instock, gazing at the Saint rapturously out of her pale protruding eyes.
Simon looked at her thoughtfully.
"I won't forget it," he said.
As he returned to his own table he heard her saying to a unanimous audience: "Isn't he the most thrilling—"
Countess Jannowicz watched his departure intently, ignoring the feminine palpitations around her. She had a sardonic sense of humour, combined with a scarcely suppressed contempt for the climbing sycophants who crawled around her, that made the temptation to elaborate the joke too attractive to resist. Several times during the following week she was impelled to engineer opportunities to refer to "that Saint person who's trying to steal my necklace"; twice again, when their paths crossed in fashionable restaurants, she called him to her table for the express pleasure of twitting him about his boast. To demonstrate her contempt for his reputation by teasing him on such friendly terms, and at the same time to enjoy the awed reactions of her friends, flattered something exhibitionistic in her that gave more satisfaction than any other fun she had had for years. It was like having a man-eating tiger for a pet and tweaking its ears.
This made nothing any easier for Mr. Ullbaum. The countess was already known as a shrewd collector of publicity, and the seeds of suspicion had been firmly planted by the opening story. Mr. Ullbaum tried to explain to groups of sceptical reporters that the Saint's threat was perfectly genuine, but that the countess was simply treating it with the disdain which it deserved; at the same time he tried to carry out his instructions to "keep it funny", and the combination was too much for his mental powers. The cynical cross-examinations he had to submit to usually reduced him to ineffectual spluttering. His disclaimers were duly printed, but in contexts that made them sound more like admissions.