Everyone leaned forward to look. Then I saw the plump white hand of the German ambassador sliding across the surface of the table toward the box like a weasel stalking a mouse. Sir Charles saw it, too. He smacked the palm of his own hand on top of the German’s, pinning it down. “Now, Wolfgang,” he said, “don’t be impatient.”
“I vant zee pill!” Ambassador Wolfgang shouted.
Sir Charles put his other hand over the pill-box and kept it there. “Do you have more?” he asked me.
I fished in my tail-coat pockets and brought out nine more boxes. “There is one for each of you,” I said.
Eager hands reached across, grabbing the little boxes. “I pay,” said Mr. Mitsouko. “How much you want?”
“No,” I said. “These are presents. Try them out, gentlemen. See what you think.”
Sir Charles was studying the label on the box. “Ah-ha,” he said. “I see you have your address printed here.”
“That’s just in case,” I said.
“In case of what?”
“In case anyone wishes to get a second pill,” I said.
I noticed that the German ambassador had taken out a little book and was making notes. “Sir,” I said to him, “I expect you are thinking of telling your scientists to investigate the seed of the pomegranate. Am I not right?”
“Zatt iss exactly vot I am tinking,” he said.
“No good,” I said. “Waste of time.”
“May I ask vy?”
“Because it’s not the pomegranate,” I said. “It’s something else.”
“So you lie to us!”
“It is the only untruth I have told you in the entire story,” I said. “Forgive me, but I had to do it. I had to protect Professor Yousoupoff’s secret. It was a point of honour. All the rest is true. Believe me, it’s true. It is especially true that each of you has in his possession the most powerful rejuvenator the world has ever known.”
At that point, the ladies returned, and each man in our group quickly and rather surreptitiously pocketed his pillbox. They stood up. They greeted their wives. I noticed that Sir Charles had suddenly become absurdly jaunty. He hopped across the room and splashed a silly sort of kiss smack on Lady Makepiece’s scarlet lips. She gave him one of those cool what-on-earth-was-that-for looks. Unabashed, he took her arm and led her across the room into a throng of people. I last saw Mr. Mitsouko prowling around the floor inspecting the womanflesh at very close quarters, like a horse-dealer examining a bunch of mares on the marketplace. I slipped quietly away.
Half an hour later, I was back at my boarding-house in the avenue Marceau. The family had retired and all the lamps were out, but as I passed the bedroom of Mademoiselle Nicole in the upstairs corridor, I could see in the crack between the door and the floor a flicker of candlelight. The little trollop was waiting for me again. I decided not to go in. There was nothing new for me in there. Even at this early stage in my career, I had already decided that the only women who interested me were new women. Second time round was no good. It was like reading a detective novel twice over. You knew exactly what was going to happen next. The fact that I had recently broken this rule by visiting Mademoiselle Nicole a second time was beside the point. That was done simply to test my Blister Beetle powder. And by the way, this principle of no-woman-morethan-once is one that I have stuck to rigorously all my life, and I commend it to all men of action who enjoy variety.
5
THAT NIGHT I slept well. I was still fast asleep at eleven o’clock the next morning when the sound of Madame Boisvain’s fists hammering at my door jerked me awake. “Get up, Monsieur Cornelius!” she was shouting. “You must come down at once! People have been ringing my bell and demanding to see you since before breakfast!”
I was dressed and downstairs in two minutes flat. I went to the front door and there, standing on the cobblestones of the sidewalk, were no fewer than seven men, none of whom I had ever seen before. They made a picturesque little group in their many-coloured fancy uniforms with all manner of gilt and silver buttons on their jackets.