I have a nose for risk; the uneasy feeling that had come over me on first reading her letter was returning. If I had any sense, I knew, I would bid the greasy Mr Greig good-day and tell him to tear his draft up. But even the biggest coward doesn’t run until some hint of danger appears, and there was none here at all—just my uneasy instinct. Against which there was the prospect of getting away from my damned relations—oh, God, and the horrors of accompanying the Morrisons into Society—and the certainty of an immediate tidy sum, with more to follow, and sheer curiosity, too. If I did go to Bavaria, and the signs were less pleasant than appeared at present—well, I could cut stick if I wanted. And the thought of renewing acquaintance with Lola—a ‘warm’ and ‘friendly’ Lola—tickled my darker fancies: from Greig’s reports, even if they were only half true, it sounded as though there was plenty of sport at the Court of Good King Ludwig. Palace orgies of Roman proportions suggested themselves, with old Flashy waited on like a Sultan, and Lola mooning over me while slaves plied me with pearls dissolved in wine, and black eunuchs stood by armed with enormous gold-mounted hair-brushes. And while cold reason told me there was a catch in it somewhere—well, I couldn’t see the catch, yet. Time enough when I did.

“Mr Greig,” says I, “where can I cash this draft?”

Chapter 5

Getting away from London was no great bother. Elspeth pouted a little, but when I had given her a glimpse—a most fleeting one—of Lauengram’s signature and of the letter’s cover, and used expressions like “special military detachment to Bavaria” and “foreign court service”, she was quite happily resigned. The idea that I would be moving in high places appealed to her vacant mind; she felt vaguely honoured by the association.

The Morrisons didn’t half like it, of course, and the old curmudgeon flew off about godless gallivanting, and likened me to Cartaphilus, who it seemed had left a shirt and breeches in every town in the ancient world. I was haunted by a demon, he said, who would never let me rest, and it was an evil day that he had let his daughter mate with a footloose scoundrel who had no sense of a husband’s responsibilities.

“Since that’s the case,” says I, “the farther away from her I am, the better you should be pleased.”

He was aghast at such cynicism, but I think the notion cheered him up for all that. He speculated a little on the bad end that I would certainly come to, called me a generation of vipers, and left me to my packing.