- [last lines]
- Hercule Poirot: You are Lucky Len of the Daily Echo, and I claim my ten guineas.
- Lucky Len: You're right. I was Lucky Len, but I'm sorry, I got fired this morning.
- Hercule Poirot: Fired! Why?
- Lucky Len: Too many people were recognizing me. The paper's decided it must be my face. It's too common.
- Hercule Poirot: Common?
- Lucky Len: That's what they say. Bit of a cheek, if you ask me, but there you are.
- Hercule Poirot: They are wrong, mon ami. You have a face that is most distinguished. You have no need to work for this newspaper. You have a face of a great man.
- Lucky Len: You think so?
- Hercule Poirot: Oh, yes; I know it.
- Ed Opalsen: That bloody little man set me up?
- Margaret Opalsen: It's your own fault. You were using him.
- Ed Opalsen: But darling, what about the pearls?
- Margaret Opalsen: Don't worry. That bloody little man got them back.
- Hercule Poirot: No no no, Hastings! It is no use! Not to take this case is for Poirot more hard work than to take it!
- [Poirot unable to resist a mystery]
- [first lines]
- Ed Opalsen: Ladies and gentlemen. When the Russian actress and dancer Natalya Dolzhenko made Salomé in 1908, she wore a necklace made of magnificent pearls given to her by the czar. Last week, at an auction in Paris, I paid three hundred thousand francs for that same pearl necklace. My wife is going to show it to you now.
- [Margaret Opalsen steps up onto the stage and removes her stole, revealing the necklace]
- Margaret Opalsen: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, our new play premières here, at your beautiful theatre, next week, prior to a six month tour of America.
- Ed Opalsen: Yes, Margaret is taking the leading part. And she will be wearing the czar's pearls at each and every performance.
- Guest: Mr Opalsen! Don't the pearls get stolen in the course of the play.
- Ed Opalsen: Yes they do, but that's in the play. They'll be under guard twenty-four hours a day. I think I can promise you that they're not going anywhere.
- Margaret Opalsen: I bet you'd guessed who'd stolen the pearls by the second interval, Monsieur Poirot.
- Hercule Poirot: Not at all, Madame, it was a question that ceased to occupy my mind long before the first.
- Hercule Poirot: Hastings, I must contact the good Miss Lemon in London.
- Captain Hastings: What for?
- Hercule Poirot: This case, Hastings, I begin to see the light.
- Captain Hastings: But I do not understand.
- Hercule Poirot: You heard what the young lady said?
- Chief Inspector Japp: Oscar Wilde?
- Hercule Poirot: Exactement. Hastings, there is work to be done.