Out there on the floor of the lab Yasmin had no hatpin to help her, and to this day I do not know precisely what it was she did to A. R. Woresley that caused him to let out yet another of those horrendous howls and to freeze so suddenly in his tracks. Nor do I wish to know, because it’s none of my business. But whatever it was, I was quite certain a nice girl like her would never have done it to a nice man like him if it had not been absolutely necessary. The next thing I knew, Yasmin was up and away and dashing for the door with the spoils of victory in her hand. I nearly stood up and clapped for her as she left the stage. What a performance! What a splendid exit! The door slammed shut and she was gone.
All at once, the laboratory became silent. I saw A. R. Woresley picking himself up slowly off the floor. He stood there dazed and wobbly. He looked like a man who had been struck on the head with a cricket bat. He staggered over to the sink and began splashing water onto his face, and while he was doing this, I myself crept from my hiding place and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door softly behind me.
There was no sign of Yasmin in the corridor. I had told her I would be sitting in my rooms at Trinity throughout the operation, so she was probably making her way there now. I hurried outside and jumped into my motor car and drove from the Science Building to the College by a roundabout route so as not to pass her on the way. I parked the car and went up to my rooms and waited.
A few minutes later, in she came.
“Give me a drink,” she said, crossing to an armchair. I noticed she was walking sort of bow-legged and treating herself tenderly.
“You look as though you’ve just brought the good news from Ghent to Aix riding bareback,” I said.
She didn’t answer me. I poured her two inches of gin and added a cubic centimetre of lime juice. She took a good gulp of the splendid stuff and said, “Ah-h-h, that’s better.”
“How did it go?”
“We gave him a little bit too much.”
“I thought we might have done,” I said.
She opened her purse and took out the repulsive rubbery thing which she had very sensibly knotted at the open end. Also the sheet of notepaper with A. R. Woresley’s signature on it.
“Tremendous!” I cried. “You did it! It all worked! Did you enjoy it?”
Her answer astonished me. “As a matter of fact I rather did,” she said.
“You did? You mean he wasn’t too rough?”
“He made every other man I’ve ever met look like a eunuch,” she said.
I laughed at that.
“Including you,” she said.
I stopped laughing.
“That,” she said softly, taking another gulp of gin, “is exactly how I want my men to be from now on.”
“But you said we gave him too much.”
“Just a teensy bit,” she said. “I couldn’t stop him. He was absolutely tireless.”
“How did you stop him?”
“Never you mind.”
“Would a hatpin be helpful next time?”
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I shall carry a hatpin. But I’d much rather get the dose exactly right so I don’t have to use it.”
“We’ll get it right.”
“I really would prefer not to go sticking hatpins into the King of Spain’s bum, if you see what I mean.”
“Oh, I do, I do.”
“I like to part company on friendly terms.”
“And didn’t you?”
“Not exactly, no,” she said, smiling slightly.
“Well done, anyway,” I said. “You pulled it off.”
“He was funny,” she said. “I wish you could have seen him. He kept hopping up and down.”
I took the sheet of notepaper with A. R. Woresley’s signature on it and placed it in my typewriter. I sat down and typed the following legend directly above the signature:
I hereby certify that I have on this day, the 27th of March, 1919, delivered personally a quantity of my own semen to Oswald Cornelius Esquire, President of The International Semen’s Home of Cambridge, England. It is my wish that this semen shall be stored indefinitely, using the revolutionary and recently discovered Woresley Technique, and 1 further agree that the aforementioned Oswald Cornelius may at any time use portions of that semen to fertilize selected females of high quality in order to disseminate my own bloodline throughout the world for the benefit of future generations.