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words to himself and went home to change into a more suitable costume than he was wearing.
    Thirty minutes later, immaculately tuxedoed for the occasion, he knocked at the door of the Berkeley Square house. It was opened by the girl who looked like Ariadne; and the likeness was passable enough; but Simon was certain that this was not the girl he had met in Athens.
    “Ariadne!” cried the Saint, with a complete show of spontaneous warmth. “And looking more beautiful than ever!”
    The girl’s eyes flickered with puzzlement.
    “Have we met somewhere?”
    “Monte Carlo. Simon Templar. We shared a langouste at the Hotel de Paris, I seem to remember.”
    “I�I think you must be mistaken,” said the girl slowly.
    Simon’s brain was racing to make her reaction add up to some kind of sense. If she was impersonating the real Ariadne, he reasoned, surely she should be bluffing it out?
    “Oh dear, forgotten incident, are we?” Simon did his best to look hurt. “Well, never mind — ‘just tell Dio Tin here, would you ?”
    Ariadne Two flushed and hesitated; she must have known that the name Simon Templar appeared nowhere on the guest list, but she was reluctant to turn him away in case Patroclos himself had invited this tall and insolently handsome man and forgotten to let her know.
    “I suppose it’s all right,” she said reluctantly. “You’d better come in.”
    “Right ho,” said the Saint, who was already halfway into the hall.
    His keen glance took in the crystal chandeliers and bracket-lights, the magnificent gilt mirror, the marble floor and columns, the elegant carved staircase. Georgian classic at its best. Coats and furs bulged from the cloaks recess behind the front door, and an upper-class babble of voices issued from the drawing room into which Simon followed the dubious-faced Ariadne Two.
    About twenty people were standing about in typical party groups, drinking champagne and talking, and making more noise about both activities than was strictly necessary. Most of the guests were instantly recognisable, as Simon had already noted, as bigwigs of one sort or another — cultural, social, financial, or in some cases all three.
    “Do you know anyone?” Ariadne Two asked.
    “Probably,” replied the Saint. “I don’t see Dio, though.”
    “He’s busy at the moment. But I’ll tell him you’re here.”
    Ariadne Two beckoned over the footman with a tray of drinks; and then, with a last uncertain glance at the Saint’s innocent features, she disappeared through a door at the far end of the room.
    Simon sampled the fine champagne appreciatively while his eyes absorbed the scene. Next to him a group were conversing loudly, trying to make themselves heard above the general hubbub.
    “Well, you know Dio,” a famous merchant banker was explaining. “Once he gets his claws into a man …”
    “Don’t we know!” chuckled another well-known financier. “Rends him limb from limb. What exactly did he do to this Kellner?”
    “Sold the company. And him along with it — bound by contract for the next five years. Sold it to a firm of East End bookmakers, if you please!”
    “Ha! Sold him into slavery, eh?”
    “Exactly!”
    “Marvellous!” put in the large operatic contralto who was part of the same group.
    “Good old Dio,” said a younger, very decorative woman in the group. “Never changes, does he?”
    The cue was too perfect for the Saint to resist.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked. “Wouldn’t you say he’d changed a bit recently?”
    Six pairs of eyes turned to look at the newcomer; and one of the financiers asked, “How d’you mean?”
    Simon hesitated.
    “I’m not exactly sure. I can’t put my finger on it somehow. There’s something …Maybe his appearance. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “Well, none of us gets any younger,” suggested the more ornamental of the women, with an appreciatively appraising glance at the Saint’s youthfully lean and elegant form.
    “I don’t