In my hysterics I knocked over the glass in front of me. Maloney immediately sent for another.

“Now tell me, Doctor, how did you get to know the Earl of Gwynedd? He’s very unsociable.”

“I’ve not seen that. I met him at Lady Malmsbury-Croft’s, and he immediately invited me.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I suppose, with all this stuff about alchemy—making gold.”

But I was no longer enjoying the conversation. It was too much like the sort of conversations I remembered from Budapest. I’d lived in England too long. I’d got out of the habit of being quizzed in this way. Interrogated, in fact.

Suddenly I smelt a rat. Drink always brings out one’s basic character, and in me it reinforces my most fundamental trait: suspicion. Wait a minute. What if Maloney was talking advantage of my drunkenness to winkle some private information out of me? True, I hadn’t the faintest idea what sort of secret I might be hiding, but there must have been one. The man on the telephone had also behaved as if I had.

However, I might be able to turn the tables on him. Maloney wasn’t too sober himself: he’d drunk a lot more than I had. Perhaps I could prise out of him what the secret was that he wanted to prise out of me.

With a spontaneous-seeming gesture I knocked my glass over a second time, exploded into a loud drunken laugh and stammered out:

“These glasses … When I grow up I’ll invent one that stays upright. And a bed that automatically produces women.”

I studied him. He was looking at me with unmistakable satisfaction.

“You speak true, oh mighty Chief! The only problem is, it’s all gobbledegook.”

“I? What do you mean?”

“All this miraculous Rosicrucian stuff—it’s a load of old cobblers.”

“Never say that!”

“I know perfectly well that you’re a doctor.”

“Maloney!” I exclaimed. “How did you guess?”

“You’ve only got to look at you. And anyway, you say you’re a doctor. You see … you’re not even denying now that you’re an expert on tropical diseases.”

“Well … that’s true. I’m especially fond of the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness.”

“But even more, of that disease with the long name that the Earl of Gwynedd’s father and William Roscoe died of.”

“Roscoe?”

“Roscoe, Roscoe the millionaire. There’s no point pretending you’ve never heard the name. Let me remind you about him.”

“Please do.”

“I’m talking about the Roscoe who was financial adviser to the old Earl, when the gentleman in question was Governor somewhere in Burma.”

“Ah, you mean the old Roscoe? Of course, of course—my brain is a bit fuddled; it always is when I’m drinking. You mean the Roscoe who, later on … who went on to … ”

“ … to marry the lady who was engaged to the present Earl of Gwynedd.”

“That’s it. Now it all comes back to me. But why aren’t we drinking? Then the poor chap died of the same disease as the old Earl, which was very strange.”

“Extremely strange. Because it was a disease with a very long name, and, for a start, old Roscoe had been back in England for years and years.”

“Yes, true. And yes, that is the reason I’m going to Llanvygan. But for God’s sake don’t tell anyone. But can you just explain this—I’ve never been clear on this one point: what exactly is the link between the Earl of Gwynedd and old Roscoe’s death?”

“Well, it’s not something they’re likely to let you in on. But since you’ve been straight with me, I’ll tell you a secret. Come a bit closer, so Osborne can’t hear.”

“Let’s have it.”

“In his will, Roscoe stipulated that, in the event of his dying an unnatural death, his whole fortune should go to the Earl of Gwynedd and his successors.”

“That’s nonsense, Maloney.