He was told one day, while at cards, that his mistress—whom he had raised from the level of a simple orange-seller—had run off with the fencing master, taking a significant quantity of the family baubles with her. His sole response was, “Every good deed gets the punishment it deserves,” and he carried on with the game.

His Christian name, incidentally, was John Bonaventura, his mother having been Italian. This odd combination of names stopped me in my tracks. I had the feeling that I had come across it, or one very like it, once before. But the memory escaped me, and did not come back to me until much later, in connection with some very odd occurrences.

To the remaining pages I gave only a cursory glance. They dealt with the nineteenth-century Pendragons, who flourished peacefully and with honour in the never-ending reign of Victoria. The present Earl’s father had been caught up in the fashionable imperialism of the day and was seldom at home. He served in various colonial regiments, held high office over subject peoples and died, in 1908, as governor of one of the provinces of Indo-China. His death was due to some sort of tropical disease that had broken out in the area at the time.

My limited information about the present Earl, the eighteenth, is provided by Who’s Who. Born in 1888, he was thus forty-five at the time of my tale. His full name was Owen Alastair John Pendragon of Llanvygan. Educated at Harrow and Magdalen College, Oxford, he served in various colonial regiments, distinguished himself in several different ways and belonged to a great many clubs. Who’s Who usually goes on to give details of hobbies and interests—these being of the greatest importance to the English—but the Earl seemed not to have provided any response to this question.

Lunchtime was upon us. I returned my books, along with Maloney’s, and was about to leave.

“Well, this is something else I’ve learnt,” he remarked. “So now I know what goes on in a library. I’d rather be in a nice little swamp. My God! I haven’t read so much in ten years. Where are you eating, by the way?”

“Greek Street. In a Chinese restaurant.”

“Would you swear blue murder if I joined you? I hate eating on my own.”

Even by Continental standards this was a rapid beginning of friendship—or whatever you might call it—and I was taken by surprise. But there was something rather touching about him, like a chimpanzee on the loose in the London streets, misunderstood by everyone but full of well-meaning.

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “But I ought to warn you, I’m lunching with a Chinese friend. I don’t know how developed your sense of colour is, or how you feel about yellow gentlemen.”

“I’ve nothing against Chinks if they aren’t cheeky. We Connemarans make no distinction between one man and another. Only if they give cheek. I once had a kaffir boy who didn’t clean my boots properly, and when I spoke to him about it he answered me back. So I grabbed him, stuck some kid’s shoes on his feet and made him walk in them for three days in the Kalahari Desert. It’s a pretty hot place. I tell you, by the third day the kaffir’s feet were half their original size. You could have used him as a fairground exhibit.”

We had reached the restaurant. Dr Wu Sei was already waiting for me.