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"Rot," said his wife. "You're no worse than anyone else. What about Jill's pearls?"

"They can have them," said Berry generously. "And my cuff-links, too." He glanced at his wrist. "Oh, they've got them. Never mind. D'you think they've taken the aspirin, just out of spite?"

"The beastly sweeps," cried Jill. "What harm have we ever done them? And they weren't my pearls. They were Piers'--his family jewels."

"Then why worry?" said Berry. "Now those cuff-links----"

Another squeal from de Palk lost us the argument.

"The greedy treachers!" he howled. "They 'ave stole my beautiful case. The cigarette-case en platine my brother 'as 'ad of the King. Were not the pearls enough? And Madame Pleydell's bracelets? And Madame Adèle's little watch? But, mon Dieu, what gluttony!"

This was a point of view which only a Frenchman could have seen, and despite the pain in my head I began to laugh.

"I expect they thought it was silver," said Berry, provocatively.

De Palk made a noise like that made by the dregs of a bath as they enter the waste, and it took the united efforts of Daphne and Adèle first to reduce him to coherence and then to make him believe that Berry's sense of decency does not exist.