Jeannine
Before you have ploughed very far into this episode, it is bound to become manifest even to the most obtuse of you that you are reading a sort of sequel to the one before. So I am going to take the edge off it and admit it before you start.
But this was not anything I planned. There was a lapse of many years between the writing of the stories. The fact that the same girl turned out to be involved was almost a surprise even to me. But the story called for a character that the Saint had matched wits with before, and while I suppose it wouldn’t have been too difficult to invent one, it seemed a lot simpler to dig one out of the Saint’s recorded past, where the previous encounter was fully documented.
This is one of the sordid advantages of writing such an unconscionable number of stories. You don’t have to keep on creating new characters indefinitely. The time comes when you only have to reach back into the half-forgotten past, pick up some personality that once flashed across your screen, and figure what might have happened to him or her (and how tediously grammatical I must be getting) since the earlier encounter.
If any aspirant authors among you want to exploit this simplified system of story-concocting, I bequeath it to you gladly with my blessing. All you have to do is to put in fifteen or more creative years, and from then on everything is on the house.
— Leslie Charteris
“Wine, that maketh glad the heart of man,” quoted Simon Templar, holding his glass appreciatively to the light. “The Psalmist would have had things to talk about.”
“It would have been a love match,” said Lieutenant Wendel, like a load of gravel.
“Up to a point,” Simon agreed. “But then he goes on: And oil to make him a cheerful countenance. Here we start asking questions. Is the prescription for internal or external application? Are we supposed to swallow the oil, or rub it on the face?... I am, of course, quoting the Revised Version. The King James has it Oil to make his face to shine, but the revisers must have had some reason for the change. Perhaps they wanted to restore some element of ambiguity in the original, dividing the plug equally between mayonnaise and Max Factor.”
The detective stared at him woodenly.
“I’ve wondered a lot of things about you, Saint. But what a guy like you wants with that quiz stuff is beyond me.”
Simon smiled.
“A man in my business can never know too much. A brigand has to be just a little ahead of the field — because the field isn’t just a lot of horses trying to win a race with him, but a pack of hounds trying to run him down. Quite a lot of my phenomenal success,” he said modestly, “is due to my memory for unconsidered trifles.”
Wendel grunted.
They sat in a booth in Arnaud’s, which Simon had chosen over the claims of such other temples of New Orleans cuisine as Antoine’s or Galatoire’s because the oak beams and subdued lights seemed to offer a more propitious atmosphere for a meal which he wanted to keep peaceful.
For Simon Templar was in some practical respects a devout lover of peace, and frequently tried very hard to vindicate the first person who had nicknamed him the Saint, in spite of all the legends of tumult and mayhem that had collected about that apparently incongruous sobriquet. Because a modern buccaneer in the perfect exploit would cause no commotion at all, even if this would make singularly dull reading; it is only when something goes wrong that the fireworks go off and the plot thickens with alarums and excursions, hues and cries, and all the uproar and excitement that provide such entertainment for the reader.
“Besides which,” Simon continued at leisure, “I like civilized amenities with my crime — or wine. Both of them have a finer flavor for being enriched with background.” He raised his glass again, passing it under his nostrils and admiring its ruby tint. “I take this wine, and to me it’s much more than alcoholic grape juice. I think of the particular breed of grapes it was made from, and the dry sunny slopes where they ripened. I think of all the lore of wine-making. I think of the great names of wine, that you could chant like an anthem — Chambertin, Romanée-Conti, Richebourg, Vougeot... I think of great drinkers — buveurs très illustres, as Rabelais addresses us — of August the Strong of Saxony, who fathered three hundred and sixty-five bastards and drank himself to death on Imperial Tokay, doubtless from celebrating all their birthdays — or of the Duke of Clarence who was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine... Or, perhaps, I might think of pearls...”
Wendel suddenly stiffened into stillness.
“I was wondering how to bring pearls into it.”
“Did you ever hear that wine would dissolve pearls?” asked the Saint. “If you collected these items, you’d have read about how the decadent Roman emperors, in their lush moments, would dissolve pearls in the banquet wine, just to prove that money was no object. And then there’s a story about Cleopatra’s big party to Caesar, when she offered him wine with her own hands, and dropped a priceless pearl in his goblet. Now if you knew—”
“What I want to know,” Wendel said, “is how much you’re interested in Lady Offchurch’s pearls.”
The Saint sighed.
“You’re such a materialist,” he complained. “I arrive in New Orleans an innocent and happy tourist, and I’ve hardly checked into a hotel when you burst in on me, flashing your badge and demanding to know what the hell I want in town. I do my best to convince you that I’m only here to soak up the atmosphere of your historic city and incidentally absorb some of your superb cooking with it. I even persuade you to have dinner with me and get this epicurean picnic off to a good start. We are just starting to relax and enjoy ourselves, with poetic excursions into history and legend, when suspicion rears its ugly head again and you practically accuse me of planning to swipe some wretched dowager’s jewels.”
“I’ll go further than that,” Wendel rasped, with the raw edges of uncertainty in his voice. “I’m wondering what made you choose this place to eat in.”
“It seemed like a good idea.”
“It wasn’t because you expected Lady Offchurch to choose it too.”
“Of course not.”
“So it’s just a coincidence that she happens to be here.”
Simon raised unhurried eyebrows.
“Behind you, on your left,” Wendel said, trap-mouthed.
The Saint drank some wine, put down his glass, and looked casually over his shoulder.
He did not need to have Lady Offchurch more specifically pointed out to him, for her picture had been in the papers not long before, and the story with it was the sort of thing that made him remember faces. The late Lord Offchurch had, until his recent demise, been the British Government’s official “adviser” to a certain maharajah, and this maharajah had bestowed upon the departing widow, as a trivial token of his esteem, a necklace of matched pink pearls valued at a mere $100,000. Lady Offchurch had provided good copy on this to receptive reporters in Hollywood, where she had been suitably entertained by the English Colony on what was supposed to be her way “home.” She had also expressed her concern over the fate of an Independent India, abandoned to the self-government of a mob of natives which even the most altruistic efforts of the British raj had been unable in two centuries of rule to lift above the level of a herd of cattle — except, of course, for such distinguished types as the dear maharajah.