Well, he was probably in a position to know about that. And to think that only a few years ago she had been a penniless dancer being hooted off a London stage.

I had hoped, considering the urgency of Lauengram’s original letter to me, to be bidden to Lola’s palace on the Monday, but that day and the next went by, and still no word. But I was patient, and kept to my hotel, and on the Wednesday morning I was rewarded. I was finishing breakfast in my room, still in my dressing-gown, when there was a great flurry in the passage, and a lackey came to announce the arrival of the Freiherr von Starnberg, whoever he might be. There was much clashing and stamping, two cuirassiers in full fig appeared behind the lackey and stationed themselves like statues on either side of my doorway, and then in between them strolled the man himself, a gay young spark who greeted me with a flashing smile and outstretched hand.

“Herr Rittmeister Flashman?” says he. “My privilege to welcome you to Bavaria. Starnberg, very much at your service.” And he clicked his heels, bowing. “You’ll forgive my French, but it’s better than my English.”

“Better than my German, at any rate,” says I, taking stock of him. He was about twenty, of middle height and very slender, with a clean-cut, handsome face, brown curls, and the wisp of a moustache on his upper lip. A very cool, jaunty gentleman, clad in the tight tunic and breeches of what I took to be a hussar regiment, for he had a dolman over his shoulder and a light sabre trailing at his hip. He was sizing me up at the same time.

“Dragoon?” says he.

“No, hussar.”

“English light cavalry mounts must be infernally strong, then,” says he, coolly. “Well, no matter. Forgive my professional interest. Have I interrupted your breakfast?”

I assured him he had not.

“Splendid. Then if you’ll oblige me by getting dressed, we’ll lose no more time. Lola can’t abide to be kept waiting.” And he lit a cheroot and began to survey the room. “Damnable places, these hotels. Couldn’t stay in one myself.”

I pointed out that I had been kept kicking my heels in one for the past three days, and he laughed.

“Well, girls will be girls, you know,” says he. “We can’t expect ’em to hurry for mere men, however much they expect us to jump to it. Lola’s no different from the rest—in that respect.”

“You seem to know her very well,” says I.

“Well enough,” says he negligently, sitting himself on the edge of a table and swinging a polished boot.

“For a messenger, I mean,” says I, to take some of the starch out of him. But he only grinned.