She was the same homely and efficient woman who had played the part of his secretary in the television build-up, but now, in readiness for an entirely different rôle, she was loudly dressed, excessively rouged and powdered, and conspicuously encrusted with jewels, to add up to the instantly recognizable prototype of a graceless and probably obnoxious vulgarian who had somehow succeeded in picking up much bullion and little breeding.
“Point him out to me, my dear,” said Mr Eade.
The next time Simon Templar sat at a bar with a vacant stool beside him, she moved onto it, expanding herself arrogantly to crowd him, and demanding the instant attention of the bartender he was talking to without even allowing him to reach the end of a sentence. It would have been impossible for him not to notice her, but she seemed superbly oblivious to the disgusted stare with which he raked her from her hennaed hair down to her pink brocade shoes.
“Don’t be afraid to give me a full shot,” she said as the bartender was pouring. “I’m paying for it, and the house can afford it.”
The bartender let the jigger run over till it stood in a little puddle on the counter, moved the glass of ice cubes and the soda water towards her, rang up the ticket and placed it in front of her, and silently went away.
“The insolence of these people!” she muttered. “Chisel you out of every drop and every nickel they can get away with, and can’t even be bothered to do it with a smile.”
Simon said nothing, watching her with cold detachment while she put the ingredients of her highball together and swallowed it greedily, toying nervously between gulps with the glittering necklace ending in a large emerald pendant which she wore around her thick but wrinkled neck.
She looked at the tab, slapped a dollar bill on it, and said in a penetrating rasp, “Keep the change, boy.”
Simon studiously averted his eyes, until a sequence of rustlings and clinkings and a finally violent flouncing assured him that she had emptied her glass and left. He suffered no anxiety, for he knew that his reaction was intended to be basically emotional and that the plot would proceed whether he entered it vocally at that stage or not.
He had time for one peaceful sip of his Peter Dawson before Mr Copplestone Eade moved in.
Mr Eade introduced himself from somewhere near the level of the floor, by brushing against the Saint’s leg, and Simon glanced down to see him straightening up with something sparkling in his hand which he appeared to have retrieved from under the Saint’s feet.
“Pardon me,” said Mr Eade, “but I think the lady who was with you dropped this.”
“She wasn’t with me,” said the Saint, gallantly forbearing to quibble over whether she should be called a lady. He looked more closely at the green bauble dangling at the end of the chain of stones and recognized it at once from the way she had drawn attention to it with her fidgeting. “But I’m pretty sure that’s hers.”
Mr Eade held the item up to admire it more carefully.
“A magnificent stone,” he remarked. “Not in the necklace itself — those are real diamonds, quite nicely mounted, but very small and not very good. Notice how the settings make them look about three times their actual size. But the emerald...” He whipped out a loupe from an inner pocket, screwed it into his eye, and peered through it at the pendant. “Yes, undoubtedly genuine. A rather shabby antique setting, but a stone that would be worth at least thirty thousand dollars in today’s wholesale market.”
He handed Simon the necklace and removed his magnifying monocle with an apologetically awkward laugh.
“Excuse me being so professional,” he said. “But I’m in the wholesale jewelry business myself, and I never seem to be able to get away from it. Everyone who hears that I’m in it has something they want to ask me about.”
He produced a card which confirmed, with all the authority of tasteful engraving, that he was indeed a wholesale jeweler, with an address in New York City which not even a native of Manhattan could have stated positively, without going back to look, was an impossible location for premises of that kind.
“Maybe you’d enjoy meeting the dame who lost this,” Simon said. “I don’t know her from Eve, except that Eve must have been a lot more attractive, or Adam would never have goofed off. But a ruin well plastered with fancy rocks.”
Mr Eade pursed his lips sympathetically.
“That type, was she?”
“Definitely. And fortissimo.”
“That’s the way it goes,” said Mr Eade, as one philosopher to another. “At the Taj Mahal, where I’m staying, I had the misfortune to run into some good customers of mine who really should go back to the Indians — East or West Indians, whichever would accept them first. They buy jewels psychopathically, like an alcoholic always wants one more drink, or a hillbilly comedian who just made the big time doesn’t only want a Cadillac, he’s got to have three. Of course they’re wonderful clients to have, but sometimes I think—”
What Mr Eade thought, aside from the necessity of naming a hotel where he could be reached, and skillfully impressing it on his interlocutor with a mnemonic twist which only an outright cretin could have forgotten, was cheated of utterance by the abrupt return of the dowager they had been discussing, who came blundering through the crowd with her eyes on the ground and a haughty disregard for the people she jostled, casting to one side and the other like a bird dog, until she appeared to scent the necklace which Simon was still holding, and plunged towards it with a shrill yip worthier of a coonhound than a pointer.
“Thank you very much,” she said, snatching it from his hand. “I suppose you were wondering if you’d have more chance of getting a reward if you turned it over to the management or if you tried to find me personally.”
“Madam,” said the Saint, “I assure you—”
“And that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt,” she said malignantly. “From the way you were looking at it, you could just as well have been trying to make up your minds whether it was worth keeping and saying nothing about at all. Well, for your information, even though the pendant is only something I took a fancy to in a junk shop, the necklace is real, and it’s insured for eight thousand dollars.”
Mr Eade gave a slight but perceptible twitch and exchanged glances with the Saint.
“If you’ll forgive me,” he said with some reluctance, “I’m afraid you’re very ill advised about that pendant.”
“I wear it because I like it,” she retorted, testing the catch and then refastening the coruscating collar around her neck. “And that’s all that matters to me, even if I only paid twenty dollars for it.”
“But as a qualified appraiser and professional jeweler,” persisted Mr Eade painfully, “it’s my duty to tell you that—”
“Oh, so that’s your racket. The things some people will do to drum up business,” she commented, almost as if she was on the verge of accusing him of having caused her to lose the necklace in the first place. “Thanks very much, but when I’ve got any work of that sort I’m not likely to give it to someone I just picked up in a bar.”
She dug into her purse, came out with a couple of crumpled dollar bills, and tossed them on to the counter.
“But here’s a drink for you, anyway, so you can’t complain that you didn’t get anything for your trouble,” she sneered, and was gone, plowing like a juggernaut through the patrons who were not quick enough to give her gangway.
Simon was the first to regain his voice.
“You see what I meant?” he murmured.
“Charming.” Mr Eade shook his head numbly and incredulously. “Never once let either of us finish what we were trying to say. And to think she may never find out what that twenty-dollar ornament is really worth.”