Michael Avallone: The Saint Magazine. January 1967. Volume 24, No. 5.

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 real 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.

“That is not my fault,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven coldly. She was going to pay a call on the wife of a minor baronet, and she was pardonably annoyed at the damage to her impressive car. “Bagshawe, will you please find me a taxi.”

“The car’ll take you there all right, ma’am,” said the chauffeur incautiously.

Mrs. Dempster-Craven froze him through her lorgnettes.

“How,” she required to know, “can I possibly call on Lady Wiltham in a car that looks as if I had picked it up at a second-hand sale? Kindly call me a taxi immediately, and don’t argue.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the abashed chauffeur, and departed on his errand.

“I really don’t know how to apologise,” said the Saint humbly.

“Then don’t try,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven discouragingly.

The inevitable small crowd had collected, and a policeman was advancing ponderously towards it from the distance. Mrs. Dempster-Craven liked to be stared at as she crossed the pavement to Drury Lane Theatre on a first night, but not when she was sitting in a battered car in Hyde Park. But the Saint was not so self-conscious.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you a lift at the moment; but if my other car would be of any use to you for the reception tonight—”

“What reception?” asked Mrs. Dempster-Craven haughtily, having overcome the temptation to retort that she had three other Rolls Royces no less magnificent than the one she was sitting in.

“Prince Marco d’Ombria’s,” answered the Saint easily. “I heard you say that you were going to call on Lady Wiltham, and I had an idea that I’d heard Marco mention her name. I thought perhaps—”

“I am not going to the reception,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven; but it was noticeable that her tone was not quite so freezing. “I have a previous engagment to dine with Lord and Lady Bredon.”

Simon chalked up the point without batting an eyelid. He had not engineered the encounter without making inquiries about his victim, and it had not taken him long to learn that Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s one ambition was to win for herself and her late husband’s millions an acknowledged position among the Very Best People. That carelessly-dropped reference to a Prince, even an Italian Prince, by his first name, had gone over like a truckload of honey. And it was a notable fact that if Mrs. Dempster-Craven had pursued her own inquiries into the reference, she would have found that the name of Simon Templar was not only recognised but hailed effusively; for there had once been a spot of bother involving a full million pounds belonging to the Bank of Italy which had made the Saint for ever persona grata at the Legation.

The chauffeur returned with a taxi, and Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s fifteen stone of flesh were assisted ceremoniously out of the Rolls. Having had a brief interval to consider pros and cons, she deigned to thank the Saint for his share in the operation with a smile that disclosed a superb set of expensive teeth.

“I hope your car isn’t seriously damaged,” she remarked graciously; and the Saint smiled in his most elegant manner.

“It doesn’t matter a bit. I was just buzzing down to Hurlingham for a spot of tennis, but I can easily take a taxi.” He took out his wallet and handed her a card. “As soon as you know what the damage’ll cost to put right, I do hope you’ll send me in the bill.”

“I shouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven. “The whole thing was undoubtedly Bagshawe’s fault.”

With which startling volte-face , and another display of her expensive denture, she ascended regally into the cab; and Simon Templar went triumphantly back to Patricia.

“It went off perfectly, Pat! You could see the whole line sizzing down her throat till she choked on the rod. The damage to the Hirondel will cost about fifteen quid to put right, but we’ll charge that up to expenses. And the rest of it’s only a matter of time.”

The time was even shorter than he had expected; for Mrs. Dempster Craven was not prepared to wait any longer than was necessary to see her social ambitions fulfilled, and the highest peak she had attained at that date was a week-end at the house of a younger son of a second viscount.

Three days later Simon’s postbag included a scented mauve envelope, and he knew before he opened it that it was the one he had been waiting for.

118, Berkeley Square,

Mayfair, W.I.

My dear Mr. Templar,

I’m sure you must have thought me rather abrupt after our accident in Hyde Park on Tuesday, but these little upsets seem so much worse at the time than they really are. Do try and forgive my rudeness.

I am having a little party here on Tuesday next. Lord and Lady Palfrey are coming, and the Hon. Celia Mallard, and lots of other people whom I expect you’ll know. I’d take it as a great favour if you could manage to look in, any time after 9:30, just to let me know you weren’t offended.

I do hope you got to Hurlingham all right.

Yours sincerely,

“Who said my technique had ever failed me?” Simon demanded of Peter Quentin at lunch-time that day.

“I didn’t,” said Peter, “as I’ve told you all along. Thank God you won’t be going to prison on Thursday, anyway — if it’s only a little party she’s invited you to I don’t suppose you’ll even see the Star of Mandalay.”

Simon grinned.

“Little party be blowed,” he said. “Gertrude has never thrown a little party in her life. When she talks about a ‘little’ party she means there’ll only be two orchestras and not more than a hundred couples. And if she doesn’t put on the Star of Mandalay for Lady Palfrey’s benefit I am a bob-tailed ptarmigan and my name is Alphonse.”

Nevertheless, when he suggested that Peter Quentin should come with him there was not much argument.

“How can you get me in?” Peter demurred. “I wasn’t invited, and I don’t know any princes.”

“You’ve got an uncle who’s a lord or something, haven’t you?”

“I’ve got an uncle who’s the Bishop of Johannesburg; but what does Mrs. Dempster-Craven care about South African bishops?”

“Call him Lord Johannesburg,” said the Saint. “She won’t look him up in Debrett while you’re there. I’ll say we were dining together and I couldn’t shake you off.”

At that point it all looked almost tediously straightforward, a commonplace exploit with nothing but the size of the prize to make it memorable. And when Simon arrived in Berkeley Square on the date of his invitation it seemed easier still; for Mrs. Dempster-Craven, as he had expected, was proudly sporting the Star of Mandalay on her swelling bosom, set in the centre of a pattern of square-cut sapphires in a platinum pendant that looked more like an illuminated sky-sign than anything else. True, there was a large-footed man in badly fitting dress clothes who trailed her around like a devoted dachshund; but private detectives of any grade the Saint felt competent to deal with. Professionals likewise, given a fair warning — although he was anticipating no professional surveillance that night. But he had not been in the house twenty minutes before he found himself confronting a dark slender girl with merry brown eyes whose face appeared before him like the Nemesis of one of his most innocent flirtations — even then he did not guess what Fate had in store for him.