And of all the five hundred freaks sitting there, it happens to be this gentleman I start to pester, and go on badgering, until it turns out we’ll soon be staying in the same place. Magnificent. Let’s drink to it!”

And indeed it was a strange coincidence. I felt truly exhilarated. It was as if the mystical power of Llanvygan Castle had projected itself all that distance. I felt the hand of Fate upon me, and was once again seized by the old, pleasurable angst that had so often haunted me, the feeling that once again things were stirring around and above me; that the Parcae were teasing out the threads of my future.

But then again: neither the half-wit Maloney nor this thoroughly affected young aristocrat carried the mark of destiny on their brows, unless it were the mocking destiny of a degenerate and cynical age such as our own.

Through all this, the young Pendragon had remained perfectly impassive. Then:

“These days even Fate has become debased,” he remarked, his voice rising towards the end of the sentence. “In Luther’s time, for example, the notion of Chance consisted of no more than a bolt of lightning striking the ground before him. It didn’t even have to hit him. And the result was the Reformation. Nowadays it means nothing more than two chaps going off together on the same holiday. Where now is ananké, where is Destiny? Or the amor fati Nietzsche praises, if I remember correctly, as the noblest thing a man could pursue?”

“Osborne is amazingly clever,” said Maloney.

“Yes, but only because it’s so unfashionable in England. If I’d been born in France I’d have become an idiot, just to spite them. So what do we say to getting stuck into that dinner?”

The dinner was superb. Over the meal, Maloney did most of the talking. His adventures became more and more richly-coloured with each glass of Burgundy.

His first story concerned a routine tiger hunt, but he went on to set entire Borneo villages aflame to make the point that Connemara men could light their pipes even in a stiff breeze, and he ended by tying the tail of a king cobra in a knot while its head was held by his tame and ever-faithful mongoose William.

“I envy our egregious friend,” observed Osborne. “If only a quarter of what he relates in the course of a dinner is true, his life could be described as decidedly adventurous. It seems things do still happen, out there in the colonies. A merry little tiger or king cobra might produce a pleasurable frisson even in the likes of me. My one wish is to go there myself. To some place out in the back of beyond, where missionaries remain the staple diet of the natives.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Sadly, since my grandfather of blessed memory died of some wonderful tropical disease my uncle has concluded that the air in those parts doesn’t agree with us. I have thus to spend the greater part of my time in Wales in our electrified eagle’s nest, from which every self-respecting spook since the time of the late lamented Queen Victoria has been driven out. Sir, three years ago, the last remaining ghost in Wales was assaulted with tear gas: the poor fellow—an elderly admiral—was sobbing like a child. But for me, belief in these things would be extinct in the region. However I have some interesting plans for the summer, and I hope you’ll assist me in them. I’ve had terrific success at Oxford with my supernatural recordings on the portable gramophone. I can produce heartfelt sighings in the most improbable of places, together with the rattling of chains and lengthy prayers in Middle English. But of course this is just sport. Real adventure is dead and buried. It couldn’t take the smell of petrol.”

“You’re eighteen, are you not?” I asked.

“I am.”

“On the Continent, young men of your age have a quite different idea of adventure.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“I was thinking of women.”

“I don’t even think of them,” he replied, faintly blushing.