reached the frozen grande-dame stage and was putting the last of the bandits through it in the voice she usually reserves for snubbing waiters in restaurants.
“I tell you, my good man, for the hundredth time—”
“I say,” I said, “don’t want to interrupt you and all that sort of thing, but these aren’t the little chaps by any chance, are they?”
I pulled the pearls out of my pocket and held them up.
“These look like pearls, what?”
I don’t know when I’ve had a more juicy moment. It was one of those occasions about which I shall prattle to my grandchildren—if I ever have any, which at the moment of going to press seems more or less of a hundred-to-one shot. Aunt Agatha simply deflated before my eyes. It reminded me of when I once saw some chappies letting the gas out of a balloon.