The Queen’s Square
Dorothy L. Sayers
‘You Jack o’ Di’monds, you Jack o’ Di’monds,’ said Mark Sambourne, shaking a reproachful head, ‘I know you of old.’ He rummaged beneath the white satin of his costume, panelled with gigantic oblongs and spotted to represent a set of dominoes. ‘Hang this fancy rig! Where the blazes has the fellow put my pockets? You rob my pocket, yes, you rob-a my pocket, you rob my pocket of silver and go-ho-hold. How much do you make it?’ He extracted a fountain pen and a chequebook.
‘Five-seventeen-six,’ said Lord Peter Wimsey. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, partner?’ His huge blue-and-scarlet sleeves rustled as he turned to Lady Hermione Creethorpe, who, in her Queen of Clubs costume, looked a very redoubtable virgin, as, indeed, she was.
‘Quite right,’ said the old lady, ‘and I consider that very cheap.’
. . .