Chapter IV
Castle Corvallin, 106 PPF - London, 1912

In scirpo nodum quaris (You are looking for a knot in a bulrush)

- Plautus

e started without you," said Tristan slightly apologetically when I Trumped him from my hotel room. It had been ransacked by Abd Reis or one of his minions, but fortunately there had been little I had been planning on taking with me. I had changed, ejected the winged cobras that my visitors had thoughtfully left as a calling card, ordered some flowers to be delivered to Evelyn by way of congratulating her on her new appointment, whichever one she happened to choose, and then I had taken steps to catch up with the others. They were probably about a third of the way to Chaos by now. "We’re about a third of the way to Chaos," Tristan informed me as I stepped through to him. I peered over the battlements. We were flying at an altitude of about a thousand feet, a rolling carpet of blue-tinged fir trees beneath us. As I watched, Tristan began shifting Shadow again, and the trees turned yellow, and then began to thin out into a primeval swamp, where vast leech-like creatures gamboled. The larger of the two suns went behind a cloud and didn’t re-emerge, even when the cloud subsequently melted away, while its smaller red companion began to set, lonely and bereft. Phosphorescent fungi began to illuminate the dark landscape below, and in the distance volcanoes spewed metallic green lava. Good old Tristan. He always knows how to put on a show. "I got you a present," I informed him, digging a votive figurine of Ma’at out of my pocket. He paused to scrutinise the small, weathered object. "Egyptian goddess of law and order," I explained, "Worshipped by Lord Legislators since the beginning of time." "Oh," said Tristan, looking surprised, "Thank you." I don’t think people give Tristan very many things, apart from petitions and legislative drafts. The really sad thing, though, is that he doesn’t seem to expect them to give him anything else either. Having gained assurances that my semi-usual quarters in the North Tower had not been requisitioned by any of my fellow guests, I wandered inside to pay my respects to Corvallin. The image of the spirit of the Castle swam into view in the mirror as I approached. For someone made out of a hundred thousand odd tons of granite, she was looking ravishingly beautiful. I complimented her on her pennants. "I bet you say that to all the castles," she replied. Actually I didn’t, but then Corvallin is the only castle I've ever met that I can actually flirt with. And who will actually flirt back. We discussed architecture for a while, in much the same way as I might have discussed fashion with Esmée or Beltaine. "I see what you mean about the Ottoman style," she mused, "but frankly, I'd rather be defensible than pretty." "You're already both," I countered, "but your current combination of High Medieval and Rhineland is only one style out of many. Imagine what it would be like if you could change your appearance as it suited you. Ottoman, Indian, Classical, Gothic, Diegan, Hyperborean ..." "Talk to Tristan about it," Corvallin suggested with a hint of a smile, "He's the one who found me." "Maybe I will," I said. I broached the subject over dinner. "Interesting idea," mumbled Tristan, who was stuffing his face like a man who had suddenly discovered food for the first time. Shifting Shadow for twelve hours at a time can do that to you. "I definitely wouldn't have any objections," he said, slightly more intelligibly, "Why don't you ask her?" "I did," I replied, "She said to talk to you about it." "And how do you propose going about doing this?" Tristan asked, calling for more asparagus. The Pattern expert was asking me? I hoisted Wilkes out by the barrel. "I modified Wilkes just by carting it about through Shadow," I explained, "It's hardly beyond your capabilities to do the same with Corvallin." A little additional cosmetic augmentation would take at most a few more days of shifting Shadow. Tristan, however, was frowning. "Yes," he said, "but Corvallin is a living, thinking being. Actively trying to change her with the Pattern may damage or alter her personality. I'm sure it should be possible, but it's something where I'd like to be absolutely sure that I know what I'm doing before I start." His expression turned grim. "Recent experience has shown that I still don't appreciate all the subtleties of manipulating Shadow," he muttered darkly. I wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean. After four days of pouring over Evelyn's transcriptions, I found myself taking a morning constitutional on the battlements, trying to clear my head. I had reached the stage where her handwriting and al-Hazred's were to my bleary eyes largely indistinguishable, and my modified Resurrection spell beginning to resemble a thaumaturgical Gordian Knot. Corvallin was not a self-contained Shadow environment, and thus our progress was marked by rapid and unpredictable shifts in her magickal environs, which meant that my experimental weavings of necromantic arcana were by necessity slow and painstaking, with much backtracking and ad hoc modification. The upside was that the resulting spell would be doubly robust, able to withstand the magical vicissitudes of practically any Shadow, but it would be triply so if I forced myself to take a proper break and think it over. I was standing on an arch between the outer curtain wall and the keep, looking down on two of the courtyards. In one, Ibrahim was practicing throwing his khopesh, using as targets a collection of waxworks we had liberated from a drifting cargo dirigible. Abandoned and losing altitude, it seemed to have been transporting the belongings of a travelling carnival, since we had also acquired two barrel organs and the paraphernalia of a stage magician. We had however let the Freak Show go down with the ship, since none of us could think of an appropriate use for the Bald Yeti or the One-Headed Cerebrus, although to be fair we had garnered some small amusement from the fake Cthulhu spawn, which was obviously just an octopus sewn onto the body of a mermaid. There was a thunk as Ibrahim's whirring blade bisected Dr Drisken, The Notorious Poisoner Of Ludbane Hill. "Congratulations," I said, "You win a goldfish." Ibrahim looked up. "A warrior needs no inducements to perfect his skill," he said, straight-faced. Ibrahim the Incorruptible, now there was a subject for a wax museum. The man who refused all the fish in Araby. There was a puff of smoke, and Evander appeared amidst the disjecta membra of the sundered dummies. "It works!" he cried, "I got the cabinet to work!" I sighed. "Is it just me," I asked, "or are we a little desperate for diversion on this particular trip?" "It is a long voyage," agreed Ibrahim, retrieving his blade, "Did you have anything in mind?" I glanced down into the other courtyard, where the grooms were tending Tristan's mounts. "How about a griffin race?" I suggested. Tristan was presumably in need of a break as well, since he seized on the idea with unexpected enthusiasm. "Ten times round Corvallin," he said, rubbing his hands, "We'll use the signal pennants as lap markers." He glanced at me, and took a deep breath. "I'll wager a hundred bottles of the finest wine from my vineyards on the outcome," he said, looking a little taken aback by his own daring. The Lord Legislator was truly letting his hair down. "Done," I said, "I'll match you with the full-sized statue of Ma'at from the Museum's reserve collections. On Ibrahim." Might as well make it interesting. Ibrahim raised an eyebrow. Tristan blinked. "Er, all right," he said, "One hundred bottles of wine on you, then. What does it do, this statue of Ma'at?" "She has a knack for discerning truth from falsehood," I said, "I keep her in the curatorial offices for staff interviews, but it's about time she had a proper home. Obviously she works better in Shadow than in Amber, so don't expect her to catch Caine out the next time you ask him who tried to shoot Telgadi." The next day, the jockeys chose their mounts. Tamarind had declined to take part. "I'll do a Trump for the winner," he said, before adding as an afterthought, "And I'll watch." With our audience guaranteed, Tristan, Ibrahim, Evander and myself approached the stables. Tristan went directly to a lean-looking beast with silver streaks in its plumage. Unsurprisingly, the man knew his griffins, since that was the one I'd been eyeing earlier. More or less at random, I chose a powerfully-muscled animal with a large crest, while Ibrahim took his time selecting his mount. I got the impression that he had to force himself not to check their beaks and claws. I don't know what criteria Evander was using, but his griffin was definitely the prettiest. We assembled atop the Barbican, with most of the castle's inhabitants crowding the battlements to watch. Below us was a black oily sea, with curiously regular azure spires drifting about amidst the languid swell. Every so often one of them would slowly topple over and submerge, and another would rise up to take its place in exactly the same spot, rotating like the spikes of some vast crystalline caltrop. Something, possibly, to avoid falling onto. One of Tristan's signalmen waved a flag, and our griffins leaped out and down into a gold and cyan sky. Ibrahim took an immediate lead, followed by Tristan. I put my griffin into a dive to pick up speed, and then gradually made up the lost altitude until I came up on Tristan's inside. The three of us rounded the Eastern Redoubt almost together, and then Tristan banked sharply and dipped beneath me, coming up in front. I encouraged my griffin to flap harder. We turned the next corner, Ibrahim still in the lead, where I tried Tristan's trick for myself, cornering as tightly as I could. It gained me maybe ten yards. Ibrahim tried diving as I had done at the start, and managed to open up his lead a bit, while Tristan suddenly began climbing, allowing me to draw level and underneath him. He then commenced a long, shallow dive which undid my recent gains, and began to close the distance between him and Ibrahim, whose griffin was slowly regaining the level of the battlements. We turned the next corner, and then the next, and just as we finished the first lap, Tristan swooped up and over Ibrahim to take the lead. I glanced back. Where was Evander? His griffin seemed to be flapping along in a slightly bewildered fashion, a fact possibly not unconnected with the fact that it was riderless. Evander had fallen off. I started to turn my mount around, when a diminutive humanoid figure appeared around the far side of Corvallin, bat-wings working furiously. His griffin finally spotted him and flew back to pick him up. Crisis averted, I concentrated on not being third any more. Tristan seemed to have hit his stride now, and was a good thirty yards ahead of Ibrahim. It looked as if both of us were going to lose our bet. I started work on gaining some altitude, a flurry of wings here, a flurry of wings there. I didn't want to waste too much time climbing, but I wanted to be high enough so that when we rounded the next corner we would have a nice, straight quarter of a mile in which to accelerate back down beside Ibrahim. It worked, and I found that by letting the griffin bank from side to side as it glided we could work up quite a head of steam. Ibrahim was still in front of me as I levelled out again, and managed to see off my attempt to overtake him on the inside as we completed the second circuit. Neither of our griffins seemed to be tiring, so I concentrated on keeping pace with him, waiting for another opening. We discovered that we had lapped Evander when we passed his unmounted griffin circling beside the North Tower, peering down at the viscous black ocean. They'd parted company again. Then its rider abruptly flew up right in front of us, realised we were on a collision course and panicked. Ibrahim swerved wide. Evander folded his wings and dropped like a stone. I nipped in to take second place. Tristan was now at least fifty yards ahead, hugging the castle walls on the straight sections, banking tightly around the towers and redoubts, and try as I might, I couldn't make any headway against his lead. It was all I could do to stay in front of Ibrahim. Ibrahim I had put my money on, or rather my Ma'at, because there were precious few things he couldn't do with a riding animal, except possibly a stroganoff with white wine sauce, but that was more for sentimental reasons than anything else. But Tristan had been riding griffins for centuries, and knew everything there was to know about coaxing that last ounce of speed out of them. After all, you never know when Oberon will show up on a black-winged hippogriff with the legions of hell at his side. We entered the fourth lap, with Tristan's lead waxing and waning by incremental degrees but growing overall. The rotating spires in the sea of ebon gloop beneath us seemed to be giving off some kind of heat, because every so often a brief but not unwelcome thermal would waft up beneath us, and Ibrahim and I would ride them for all we were worth. Tristan, sticking more closely to Corvallin's walls, was less well placed to take advantage of the uplift thus provided, but he didn't seem to need it. I appeared to be catching more of the updrafts than Ibrahim, but Ibrahim's superior riding skills meant that I still wasn't drawing ahead of him. We passed Evander again. His griffin was flapping along with what seemed like exaggerated care, mindful now of the fact that it was carrying a complete amateur on its back. Evander wasn't helping his progress much by keeping his own winds spread. Occasionally he'd flap them, but then cease abruptly, as if afraid that it counted as cheating. He waved as we went past, and fell off again. Ibrahim finally overtook me midway through the fifth lap, and try as I might, I couldn't get past him again. A couple of times I got close, but each time he managed to beat off my challenge, and by the sixth lap he had opened up a gap that I knew I wasn't going to bridge. Tristan's lead had also grown commensurately, and the rest of the race was largely a formality. Tristan came in first, a good hundred and fifty yards ahead of Ibrahim, who in turn led me by a similar amount. Evander got the biggest cheer of all when he decided to quit while he was behind, although this may not have been unconnected with the fact that he had spared us having to watch him make up his four lap deficit on his own. "Well, that's a hundred bottles of wine I owe you," Tristan told me. Well, if he wanted to look at it that way ... "No, I insist," he said. He only had eighty two bottles of the year in question immediately to hand, but I accepted his note for the other eighteen. We cracked a few open, and drank a series of toasts to the winner, to the runner-up, to the other runner-up, to Evander, to griffins, to Tamarind for watching, to the signaler who had started us off, to the servants who had manned the pennants, to me again for coming up with the idea ... It was the next day before we got underway again. Tristan once more manned the helm, Ibrahim returned to his practice, Tamarind began work on the Trump he had promised Tristan, and Evander went off to explore the cellars and got lost. I settled back into my thaumaturgical research, mind refreshed, ready once more to do battle with my recalcitrant magicks. My studies picked up almost at once, and by the time we reached Chaos a week later, I had a usable resurrection spell, and a modified warding attuned to the mummy case's dark sorceries. We left Corvallin several Shadow veils away from the Abyss, since Tristan was understandably reluctant to see how big a crater she could make when he shifted her into a Shadow fragment inimical to the aerial properties of flying castles. We arrived at the fortress that guarded the approach to the fallen Citadel and announced ourselves, while Tamarind paid a brief pilgrimage to Deirdre's monument by the edge of the precipice that marked the end of the Universe. An adjutant who was beginning to exhibit the signs of the thousand-yard stare that typified those who dwelt too long under the mad mandala that passed for a sky in these parts told us that all was calm and uneventful, although a patrol had reported a rain of eyeballs, and a dispatch rider had gone missing, believed fallen over the horizon on one of the less stable Shadow paths. Tamarind arrived back, so we commandeered a meeting room and set about scrying the health, whereabouts and general ontological status of Evander's lost kin. I watched Evander as he brought out his Trumps. He didn't seem particularly subdued or upset by his return to the bleak and empty land now fled by his forefathers; indeed, he appeared quite eager as he listened while Tamarind explained the mysteries of Trump scrying. "Frame the question in your mind," he was told, "It helps to make it as unambiguous as possible. If you want to ask a question about a specific person or place, place their card in front of you, and use it as a focus for the rest of the reading. Then empty your thoughts of everything else, and concentrate on the question as you shuffle the cards. Keep concentrating as you lay them out, like this." Tamarind did a quick demonstration of a standard Tree of Life spread. Evander nodded, and had a go at constructing a reading around one of his Trumps, a rather impressionistic depiction of an unfamiliar location, possibly the place where he had been brought up. We inspected the result. "Well," said Tristan, "The answer seems to be yes." "Hmm," said Evander, apparently in no hurry to tell us what the question had actually been, "Er, can we try another?" "That's what we're here for," I said, "Take your time." Evander looked through his deck again. As well as the standard Family album and the unknown place Trump, he retained several others from his upbringing in Chaos, including an athletic-looking red-haired woman - his mother, Lady Xanthippe - and a teenage girl of vaguely oriental mien with straight black hair and hazel eyes, whom he described as his cousin. He decided to use the latter. Possibly Lady Xanthippe, if she had indeed lied to him about his paternity, had slid somewhat down his scale of affections. "Where can she be found?" intoned Evander as he cast the cards around his cousin's Trump. This time all we got was the familiar nonsensical jumble. She was yes a long time ago backwards danger out of happily ever after no in the short term, although this last part was ambiguous. "I think it's trying to tell us that that toothpicks in Chinese restaurants should be avoided at all costs," I said, which made about as much sense as any other possible interpretation. "What?" said Evander, "Where?" Tamarind sighed. "It's the same as all the others," he said, "I don't think we're going to get anywhere with this. But we could still try using the Trump to see if we can contact her." Evander concentrated on the Trump of his cousin. Tamarind joined him, as did Tristan and Ibrahim when it became clear that they weren't getting anywhere on their own. Since I doubted that there was much I could add to the collective psychic effort, I sat this one out. The denizens of Chaos were evidently still sulking, since eventually the others gave up. Evander looked downcast. "Sorry," he said, "It looks like this was a wasted journey." "I didn't think it was wasted," I said truthfully. The others, mindful of a lurking FitzSimmons awaiting them back in Amber, also hastened to reassure him. "At least we know that it's not just my Trumps," said Tamarind, "Wherever they are, they can't be reached." And that was that. Tristan decided that we might as well make ourselves useful and play the mail packet on the way back, and so went off to see if the garrison had any letters home. I assumed that these would be delivered first of all to the psychologists working for Amber's General Staff - anyone caught using green ink would be earmarked for early rotation, while those who had lapsed into crayon would be shipped home immediately. The rest of us wandered outside and peered into the Abyss while we waited for him. Somewhere down there, or out there, or beyond there, the Courts of Chaos were hiding, but nobody popped up to peer back into us. Tristan rejoined us, carrying a mail sack. "Shall we go?" he said. We went. The return journey was about as eventful as the outgoing one, but at least afforded me the opportunity to fine-tune my new spells. I was now fairly confident that if Queen Nitocris truly resided in the fugitive fabric of the mummy case, then I could indeed extract her and restore her to life, whilst at the same time being able to shrug off anything that the curse could throw at me. The big proviso, of course, was that in order to resurrect her, I would require a physical body, either recently dead or otherwise spiritually unoccupied, into which to decant her. A sensible thing might have been to locate and prepare such a receptacle first, but an equally sensible voice informed me that carting corpses about might attract an excess of unwanted attention. I decided to wait and see how things went on the casket-hunting front. No doubt something would turn up when I was ready. "You can drop me off here, thank you," I said to Tristan a few days short of the Golden Circle. Tristan peered over the side of the battlements. "Not literally," I added. "I was just looking for somewhere to set down," he said, "Unless you'd like a parachute." I shrugged. "Might as well," I said, "It'll save us both a bit of time." So I made my farewells, commiserated with Evander once more on his lack of success with the Trumps, stuffed a bottle of my newly acquired vinous horde into my backpack, and then jumped over the side. A canopy of silk billowed above me as Corvallin sailed away and disappeared behind a cloud. She didn't re-emerge. I landed in a haystack, untangled myself from the parachute, and then strolled off towards the nearest road, where, I decided, a carriage was waiting for me. "Where to, sir?" said the coachman. "Oh," I said, "just drive around for a while." We rattled off, and I began concentrating once more on the elusive sarcophagus of the legendary Queen. Four days of careful Shadow-shifting later, I arrived in a Shadow Earth of not unpromising aspect in the Spring of 1912. Contrary to what vague expectations I might have entertained, I found myself not in Cairo or Alexandria, but in that second city of cities after Amber itself, London. Some collector had evidently managed to survive long enough to cart the coffin back to Babylon-on-Thames. Now that I was in the right Shadow, I was going to have to resort to more old fashioned means of investigation, since the sarcophagus' wardings seemed to be designed to deflect long-range scrying spells. Fortunately, I knew just the place to start looking. I found myself recognised as I entered the premises of the Egypt Exploration Fund, and so took care to note my address from previous appointments as I signed the visitors' book. Apparently I had a flat on the Strand, overlooking the river. Of the eight Shadows so far through which I had stalked the Ghoul Queen's funerary casement, I had discovered in five of them that I was already known as a collector and a student of antiquity, and in the remaining three I had not stayed long enough to ascertain my local notoriety one way or the other. This coincidence, if coincidence it was, had been exercising me for some time. The more fanciful part of me was inclined to interpret it as Fate, a confirmation that the destinies of the long dead sorceress and I were somehow intertwined. A more likely explanation, however, was that half a century of exploration and the attendant casting of personal Shadows had left a sufficient symposium of Damien Mortlakes scattered between worlds to allow for random chance. I made use of the Pattern to ensure that my local doppelganger would be abroad, and was not planning on coming back any time soon. This would help avoid embarrassment, and would also provide me with a temporarily unoccupied Mortlake-shaped mantle into which I could step. Impersonating one's own Shadows can be tricky business, but people are going to make assumptions anyway, and it's generally easiest to play along. I liked to think of it as a last minute recasting of the leading rôle in a melodrama. And now that the curtain was rising for yet another performance, I was angling for a little more control over the script. To paraphrase Chekhov, the essence of tragedy is that if a cursed mummy case is seen on the mantelpiece in the First Act, then it will be used in the Third. My job was to see that it damn well stayed on the mantelpiece, and that the leading lady finally emerged to take a bow. Call me sentimental, but I like my Sturm und Drang leavened by the occasional happy ending. However, before I could start wielding the red pen, I first of all had to find out what the script actually was. Caution disinclined me to make too public a pronouncement of the object of my research, as previous experience had impressed upon me that where went my Shadows, rival collectors followed not far behind. No doubt the Thule Bund, or some other predecessor of the Ahnenerbe, would soon be snapping at my heels. At least I could probably count on a non-appearance by Jones, who was hopefully still a teenager somewhere in America's Mid-West, or, even better, didn't exist in this world at all. But regardless, rather than make any direct personal enquiries, I buried myself in the Fund's archives, trawling my way through sundry expedition reports, correspondence files, sponsorship requests, dig permits and all the other minutiae of archaeological academia. I found what I was looking for within the first fifteen minutes. In the autumn of 1910, my old friend Thomas Douglas Murray had once again been the recipient of "a mummy casket of an unknown Queen or Princess, prob. Old Kingdom, good condition, provenance uncertain". That would be the third time the artefact had fallen into in this particular fellow's hands. Either he too had become ensnared by destiny, or else the mummy case's meanderings were restricted to a limited range of realities, in which Mr Murray's archetype was a not infrequent constant. I wasn't entirely sure yet what this limiting factor might be. It certainly wasn't the local magick of Shadow, since thus far the case had cropped up in several quite disparate magickal environments. Maybe it could only hop short distances, between close and hence similar worlds. One thing bothered me, however, and that was the timing of the discovery. Taking into account my dalliance with Evelyn and the trip to Chaos and back, it was no more than two or three months since the mummy case had departed Port Alexandria, leaving the other Douglas Murray dead with an expression of terror etched into his face. But that was subjective time only, and if time ran faster in this Shadow then the sarcophagus could have been here for anything up to a year and a half. Could this really be the same casket, or was it just a Shadow echo, a red herring of a reflection? I decided that it could. My impression from earlier near encounters had been that whatever else may have been governing its movements, the mummy case had been jumping to worlds where time ran at a progressively faster and faster rate. Why this was I wasn't certain. Maybe it was aiming at some ultimate destination with a particularly precipitous temporal turnover, or maybe it just wanted a little more breathing room before I caught up with it again, a little longer each time for it to work its sinister magicks on those unlucky enough to chance across it. Speaking of which, Murray seemed to have promised the Fund a fuller description of his find, perhaps even a short paper to be published in their Annual Report. However, I could find no subsequent manuscript references either to the mummy case, the promised paper, or even to Murray himself. I checked the Fund's Register of Subscribers. He was still listed, but there was no record of his address. I decided that I had uncovered enough to risk making a tentative verbal enquiry or two, and so I went to see the Fund's Secretary. "Ah yes, Douglas Murray," said the Secretary, "I'm afraid he hasn't been an active contributor to our work for quite a while now." "So I gather," I replied, "but I was hoping to have a chat with him about one of his expeditions." The Secretary frowned. "My understanding is that he's a bit of a recluse these days," he said, thereby at least confirming that Murray was still alive, "His last trip to Egypt was a rather tragic affair, you see. Lost an arm in a hunting accident, companions struck down by illness, that sort of thing. Had a bit of a nervous breakdown afterwards, blamed it all on some mummy's curse." "Most curious," I allowed. The Secretary's face took on a ruminative expression, manifest mainly in the sucking of his not inconsiderable whiskers. "Funny you should be asking after him," he mused. "How so?" I asked, tensing slightly. I could see what was coming. "Well," said the Secretary, "Your Lordship isn't the only person who's been in touch with the Fund looking for Mr Murray." "Let me guess, " I sighed, "Tall, thin, Egyptian, looks like you could chop him up for firewood?" The Secretary blinked. "Er, no," he said, "It was Mr Stead, the journalist." Now it was my turn to blink. "William Stead?" elaborated the Secretary, "Used to edit the Pall Mall Gazette? Eccentric fellow, bit of a radical. Bee in his bonnet about white slavery. Dabbles in spiritualism too, I hear." "Ah," I said, "Of course." I wasn't particularly any the wiser, but at least I could now drop the name in conversation and in so doing sound reasonably informed. "What was Mr Stead's interest?" I enquired idly. The Secretary snorted. "He kept on badgering me for Mr Murray's address," he told me, "Said he had reason to believe the poor fellow could help him prove the existence of life after death. Spiritualism, you see. Bit of a dabbler, as I said." I managed a smile. "Anything to do with this mummy's curse you mentioned?" I asked. "I really couldn't say," said the Secretary, "I told him that couldn't just give out the addresses of our subscribers willy-nilly, or even those of our ex-subscribers. He came back a couple of times, but in the end he took no for an answer and went away. Did I tell you that he's a pacifist too?" "Not in so many words," I said, getting up and wandering over to the window. Bowler hats and crinolines were parading around Bloomsbury in the watery April sunshine. I concentrated on the Pattern again. It was altogether probable, I decided, that the Secretary was a bit of a snob. Whatever information he might refuse to some radical journalist with a thing about ectoplasm, he could hardly turn down a similar request from a peer of the realm ...

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