She took a whisky and soda to her bedroom, undressed slowly before the fire, and wrapped herself in her dressing-gown; then she sat for a time sipping the whisky. She felt very much restored, and presently went to turn on her bath. Sitting on the edge of it was Heatherley.
Sophia huddled into her dressing-gown, paralysed with terror. She had a remote feeling of thankfulness that she had put on the dressing-gown; as her bathroom led out of her bedroom and had no other entrance she very often did not. Heatherley had an extremely disagreeable, not to say alarming expression on his face, and she was far too much unnerved to reproach him for being in her bathroom, or indeed to say anything.
He stood up and barked at her, and any doubts left in her mind as to his being a German were removed.
‘You were seen this afternoon, coming out of the Hospital Museum. What were you doing there?’
Sophia felt like a rabbit with a snake. ‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said. ‘I always think those Siamese twins are rather little duckies, don’t you?’
She saw that this had teased Heatherley and it occurred to her that he did not know about her finding the King of Song. She rather supposed that if he had even guessed at such a thing, she would by now be going for a swim down the drain. ‘Pull yourself together, you’re descended from Charles II, aren’t you?’ Sophia was enough of a snob to feel that this equivocal connexion put her on a superior footing to Heatherley whether he was American or German, neither country having, so far as she could remember, existed in Charles II’s day. ‘Now do you agree,’ she babbled on, playing for time, ‘that Charles II was far the most fascinating of all our Kings?’
‘I’m afraid I have not come here to discuss Charles II. I have come to inform you upon two subjects. First, you should know that I am not, as you supposed, a counter-spy.’
‘Hun or Yank?’ asked Sophia. A spasm of intense rage crossed Heatherley’s face. She was beginning positively to enjoy the interview.
‘I am the head of the German espionage system in this country. My name is Otto von Eiweiss. Florence is Truda von Eiweiss, my wife. Heil Hitler.’
‘Your wife!’ said Sophia, ‘goodness me, all this time I’ve been thinking you fancied her!’
‘Secondly,’ went on Heth, taking no notice of her but trembling with anger, ‘Truda and I think you know too much. We think you have been prying into affairs which do not concern you. We also think that you might soon begin to prattle of these affairs to your friends, who, although they all belong to that decadent class which we National Socialists most despise, might in their turn (purely by accident, of course, they are too soft and stupid to have any purpose in life) harm us with their talk. So, in order to make certain that none of this shall happen, we have taken your bulldog, Millicent, into protective custody, as we have noticed that in your unnatural English way you seem to love her more than anything else. In three days’ time, if you behave exactly as we tell you, she will be back once more under your eiderdown, but otherwise –’
‘Quilt,’ Sophia corrected him mechanically. She despised the word eiderdown. Then, suddenly realizing what he meant, ‘My bulldog, Millicent – Milly? You fearful brute,’ and she forgot all about Charles II and what fun it was to tease Heth, and went for him tooth and nail.
Heatherley warded off her bites and scratches with humiliating ease, and twisting one of her arms in schoolboy fashion, he continued, ‘Now, be quite quiet, and listen to me.’
‘Ow, this hurts; let me go.’
‘Are you going to be quiet? Good. Now I shall continue our little chat. The bulldog, Millicent, as I was just remarking, is in protective custody.’
‘Where?’
‘I shall not divulge.’
‘Has she had her dinner at six?’
‘If her dinner-time is punctually at six she most probably has. She was removed from your house at six-thirty precisely.’
‘Oh! Where is she, please?’
‘It is no concern of yours where she is.’
‘You brutish Hun, of course it is a concern of mine. In this weather. She will catch cold, she will get bronchitis. These dogs have frightfully weak chests. Savage – kaffir – fuzzy wuzzy – you –’
‘To call me all these things will not advance the cause of Millicent, very far from it. She is now in my power, and you had better be nice to me.’ Heatherley leant towards her with a horrible leer.
‘I shall tell Florence about you coming into my bathroom when I have nearly nothing on,’ she said. This shot appeared to have gone home. Heatherley looked quite disconcerted.
‘The bulldog,’ he said, after a pause, ‘will be returned to you in perfectly good condition so long as you have been obedient to us and stuck not only to the letter but also to the spirit of our instructions. Otherwise, I regret to inform you that not only will she be vivisected for several hours and then put, as Greta was put, still alive, into the main drain, but that, long before you can act, you also will have ceased to live.’
‘Devil. I must say I shouldn’t care to be you, after you are dead. Would you like to
