The Eiweisses, close friends of Hitler, had been preparing their position since the Munich putsch of 1923, and as Heatherley Egg and Florence Turnbull were quite well-known citizens of the United States, and the most trusted lieutenants of Brother Bones. They were known to be bores, on both sides of the Atlantic; more sinister attributes had never been suspected, least of all by the worthy Brother himself. In the end they seemed to have been undone by a sort of childish naïveté. Sir Ivor could always dispel, as soon as they arose, any doubts of his bona fides by talking to them of his old music teacher at Düsseldorf, of the German Christmas which he loved so much, of the duel he had fought as a student, and his memories of the old beer cellar. He aroused a nostalgia in their souls for the Fatherland, and thus he lulled any suspicions which they might otherwise have had. Picture the delight with which his fellow-citizens now learnt of his duplicity. The old music teacher (long since dead, the broadcast, like the duet with Frau Goering, had been a hoax) was really a Polish Jew, the ‘King’ detested beer, he had never spent a Christmas in Germany, and the scar on his temple, which, so he had told the von Eiweisses, was the result of a duel, had really been acquired in a bicycling accident many years ago when he had toured the Isle of Wight with the posthumous Duchess and Lady Beech, in bloomers.
As for Rudolph, while everybody admitted the value of his work, nobody could forbear to smile; the public took him to their hearts as a sort of Charley’s Aunt, and he soon figured in many a music-hall joke. His colonel sent for him and drew his attention to the rule that officers should not appear in mufti during wartime.
Sophia gave a dinner party in honour of the King of Song and of Luke’s safe return from America. It was a large party. The guests included Lady Beech, Fred and Ned and their wives, Mary Pencill, Sister Wordsworth, the Gogothskas, Rudolph, a girl called Ruth whom Luke had met on the clipper and who was now staying in Florence’s room at 98 Granby Gate, and, of course, the King of Song himself in the very wig which had been found by the innocent gambollers of Kew Green, and which he had borrowed for the evening from the Scotland Yard museum of horrors.
Olga arrived late enough to be certain of being last, but not so late that dinner would have been started without her. Years of practice enabled her to hit off the right moment. She was in the uniform of her important war work, and wore a small tiara which she had bought back from the American who had bought it from Serge’s father. It bore historic associations, having belonged, so she alleged, to Catharine the Great, one of whose lovers one of Serge’s ancestors, of course, had been. Sophia had once caused very bad feeling by asking whether the diamonds were yellow with age or whether Catharine the Great had been disappointed in Serge’s ancestor. Olga now made herself the centre of attention by the announcement that she was leaving almost at once for Kurdistan, on a very important mission.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I go down to Suffolk to say adieu to Moushka; early next week I leave.’
Moushka was old Mrs Bagg. In Olga’s pre-Russian days she had been known as Mummy, which had been all right for the mother of Baby Bagg. Princess Olga Gogothsky required a Moushka. Serge, on the other hand, always called his parents Pa and Ma; but then he pronounced his own name, as did all his friends, like that stuff of which schoolgirls’ skirts are made. Olga gave it a very different sound – ‘Sairgay’.
‘I suppose, now that Sophia has caught all the spies in London, there is nothing much left for you to do here,’ said Rudolph, loyally.
‘Spies!’ The Princess gave a scornful twist to her lips as though spies were enormously beneath her attention, nowadays. ‘No, I have important business to do there, for my Chief, with the Kahns.’
Nobody asked who the Kahns were.
Serge was in the seventh heaven. It seemed that, by dint of enlisting under an assumed name and as a private, he had managed to get back to his Blossom. Determined not to lose his love a second time, he was now on the water-waggon, but even this experiment had not damped his spirits, and he appeared to be the happiest living Russian.
Fred and Ned had once more reversed positions. Ned had proved to be even more of a failure at the Ministry than Britain had expected he would, and there had been, the day before Sophia’s dinner, a Cabinet purge during which Ned was sent off to try his luck in another place. As we do not yet live under a totalitarian régime, this other place was, of course, that English equivalent of the grave, the House of Lords. Meanwhile, Fred, reinstated in both popular and Ministerial esteem by the triumphant return of Sir Ivor King, was back at his old job. This exchange was, luckily, to the satisfaction of both parties. Ned’s wife had for some time been making his nights hideous with her complaints and assertions that at her age (she was nearly thirty) it was quite unheard of not to be a peeress and made her look ridiculous, while Fred had never taken to Blossom with Serge’s ardour and had really been hankering after that Cabinet key all the time.
Fred and Sir Ivor were soon discussing the campaign of Song Propaganda which was to be launched the following
