'Bed?' yelled Chinanda getting unsteadily to his feet. 'Nobody goes upstairs. You all sleep down in the cellar. Go down there now.'
'If you really suppose for one moment that I am going to allow these poor children to go down that cellar again in their present condition and without being thoroughly washed you're very much mistaken.'
Chinanda jerked the cord on the Venetian blind and cut out the view from the garden.
'Then you wash them in here,' he said pointing to the sink.
'And where do you propose to be?'
'Where we can see what you are doing.'
Mrs de Frackas snorted derisively. 'I know your sort, and if you think I am going to expose their pure little bodies to your lascivious gaze...'
'What the hell is she saying?' demanded Baggish.
Mrs de Frackas turned her contempt on him. 'And yours too, don't I just. I haven't been through the Suez Canal and Port Said for nothing you know.'
Baggish stared at her. 'Port Said? The Suez Canal? I never been to Egypt in my life.'
'Well I have. And I know what I know.'
'So what are we talking about? You know what you know. I don't know what you know.'
'Postcards,' said Mrs de Frackas. 'I don't think I need say anymore.'
'You haven't said anything yet. First the Suez Canal, then Port Said and now postcards. Will someone tell me what the hell these things have to do with washing children?'
'Well if you must know, I mean dirty postcards. I might also mention donkeys but I won't. And now if you'll both leave the room...'
But the implications of Mrs de Frackas' imperial prejudices had slowly dawned on Baggish.
'You mean pornography? What century you think you're living in? You want pornography you go to London. Soho is full '
'I don't want pornography and I don't intend to discuss the matter further.'
'Then you go down the cellar before I kill you,' yelled the enraged Baggish. But Mrs de Frackas was too old to be persuaded by mere threats and it took bodily pressure to shove her through the cellar door with the quads. As they went down the steps Emmeline could be heard asking why the nasty man didn't like donkeys.
'I tell you the English are mad,' said Baggish. 'Why did we have to choose this crazy house?'
'It chose us,' said Chinanda miserably, and switched out the light.
But if Mrs de Frackas had decided to ignore the fact that her life was in danger, upstairs in the flat Wilt was now acutely aware that his previous tactics had backfired on him. To have invented the People's Alternative Army had served to confuse things for a while, but his threat to execute, or more accurately to murder Gudrun Schautz had been a terrific mistake. It put a time limit on his bluff. Looking back over forty years Wilt's record of violence was limited to the occasional and usually unsuccessful bout with flies and mosquitoes. No, to have issued that ultimatum had been almost as stupid as not getting out of the house when the going was good. Now it was distinctly bad, and the sounds coming from the bathroom suggested that Gudrun Schautz had torn up the lino and was busy on the floorboards. If she escaped and joined the men below she would add an intellectual fervour to their evidently stupid fanaticism. On the other hand he could think of no way of stopping her short of threatening to fire through the bathroom door, and if that didn't work...There had to be an alternative method. What if he opened the door himself and somehow persuaded her that it wasn't safe to go downstairs? In that way he could keep the two groups separate and provided they couldn't communicate with one another Fraulein Schautz would be hard put to it to influence her blood-brothers down below. Well, that was easy enough to do.
Wilt crossed to the telephone and jerked the cord from the wall. So far so good but there was
