He seemed to expect a comment, so I suggested the wedding be postponed.

“On what pretext? If the real reason were known, the marriage could never take place at all, obviously. And the Strackenz pot would boil over. At the moment, no one knows of Carl Gustaf’s malady except his own physician, and two highly-placed Danish ministers The rest of Denmark, like Germany and Strackenz suspects nothing amiss, and expects the wedding to go forward.”

“You say only three people know that this Prince has Cupid’s measles? Then how do you….”

“I have my own sources. The three I mentioned, the Prince and ourselves are the only people who know. Rest assured.” He juggled the object in his hand. “The wedding must take place.”

“Well, he’ll just have to marry her, clap and all, won’t he? What else….”

“Out of the question,” says de Gautet, speaking for the first time. “Humanitarian reasons apart, it would surely be discovered afterwards, and the ensuing scandal would have as disastrous an effect as a postponement of the marriage.”

“Well, then, talk sense,” says I. “If the Prince can’t marry her in six weeks, the wedding’s off, ain’t it? You’ll have to think of something else.”

“We have,” says Bismarck. “And the wedding will take place.”

“You’re talking bloody nonsense,” says I. “Anyway, what the hell do I care? What has all this to do with me?”

Bismarck tossed down on the table the thing he had been holding. It slithered along the length of the wood and stopped in front of me. I saw it was a gold case, oval, and about four inches long.

“Open it,” says Bismarck.

I touched the catch, and the thing sprang open. In it was a miniature, in very fine colour, showing a man in uniform, youngish, but with a completely bald head which gave him an unnatural look. He wasn’t bad-looking, though, and it seemed to me I knew him…and then the case dropped from my fingers, and the room seemed to swim about me. For I did know him; saving the bald head, the face in the miniature was my own. It was all too familiar from my own mirror: the likeness was uncanny, exact.

“Prince Carl Gustaf of Denmark,” says Bismarck, and his voice seemed to be coming through a fog.

I’m not often at a loss for words, but at that moment I sat stricken dumb. The enormity of the idea—for it was as plain as a pikestaff in an instant—was beyond reasonable comment. I just sat and gaped from them to the miniature and back, and Rudi’s jovial laugh rang out.

“Magnificent!” cries he. “I’d not have missed that moment for a dukedom! I wish you could have seen your face—your own face, I mean.”