"Don't yell at me, I feel awful," Simon told her. He sat down at his
desk, passed his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fumbled in
a drawer for the aspirin bottle.
He looked over at Betty and said, almost as though reciting, "What I
need is a vacation."
"What," Betty said, "are you going to use for money?"
"Providence," Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle,
"will provide."
"Hm-m-m. But before providing vacations it'd be nice if Providence
turned up a missing jewel deal, say. Something where you could deduce
that actually the ruby ring had gone down the drain and was caught in
the elbow. Something that would net about fifty dollars."
Simon said, mournful of tone, "Fifty dollars? Why not make it five
hundred?"
"I'm not selfish," Betty said. "All I want is enough to pay me this
week's salary."
"Money," Simon said. "When you took this job you said it was the romance
that appealed to you."
"Hm-m-m. I didn't know most sleuthing amounted to snooping around
department stores to check on the clerks knocking down."