He stared at me, comprehension dawning on his face. “So that’s what it was,” he said. “Inside the bloody chocolate, I suppose.”

“Naturally. And if you swallowed it, then so will the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales and Mr. Joseph Conrad and all the rest of them.”

He started pacing up and down the lab, albeit a trifle gingerly. “I told you once before, Cornelius,” he said, “that you are a totally unscrupulous fellow.”

“Absolutely,” I said, grinning.

“Do you know what that woman did to me?”

“I can make a pretty good guess.”

“She’s a witch! She’s a—a vampire! She’s disgusting!”

“you seemed to like her well enough,” I said, pointing to the thing on the bench.

“I was drugged!”

“You raped her. You raped her like an animal. you were the disgusting one.”

“That was the Blister Beetle.”

“Of course it was,” I said. “But when Mr. Marcel Proust rapes her like an animal, or King Alfonso of Spain, will they know they’ve had the Blister Beetle?”

He didn’t answer me.

“They most certainly will not,” I said. “They may well wonder what the hell came over them, just as you did. But they’ll never know the answer, and in the end they’ll simply have to put it down to the incredible attractiveness of the girl. That’s all they can put it down to. Right?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“They will be embarrassed at having raped her, just as you are. They will be very contrite, just as you are. They will want to hush the whole thing up, just as you do. In other words, they will give us no more trouble. We skidaddle with the signed notepaper and the precious sperm and that will be the end of it.”

“You are a rapscallion of the first water, Cornelius. You are an unmitigated scoundrel.”

“I know,” I said, grinning again. But the logic of my argument was irrefutable. The plan was watertight. A. R. Woresley, who was certainly no fool, was beginning to realize this. I could see him weakening.

“What about that girl?” he said. “Who was she?”

“She’s the third member of our organization. She’s our official teaser.”

“Some teaser,” he said.

“That’s why I chose her.”

“I shall be embarrassed, Cornelius, if I have to meet her again.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “She’s a great girl. You’ll like her very much. She happens to like you, too.”

“Rubbish. What makes you think that?”

“She said you were absolutely and positively the greatest. She said that from now on she wants all her men to be like you.”

“She said that? Did she actually say that, Cornelius?”

“Word for word.”

A. R. Woresley beamed.

“She said you made all other men look like eunuchs,” I said, ramming it home.

A. R. Woresley’s whole face began to glow with pleasure. “You are not pulling my leg, are you, Cornelius?”

“Ask her yourself when you see her.”

“Well well well,” he said, beaming away and preening his horrible moustache lightly with the back of his fingers.

“Well well well,” he said again. “And may I ask what her name is, this remarkable young lady?”

“Yasmin Howcomely. She’s half Persian.”

“How interesting.”

“You must have been terrific,” I said.

“I have my moments, Cornelius,” he said. “Ah yes indeed, I certainly have my moments.” He seemed to have forgotten about the Blister Beetle. He wanted all the credit himself now and I let him have it.

“She can’t wait to meet you again.”

“Splendid,” he said, rubbing his hands. “And she’s going to be a part of our little organization, you say?”

“Absolutely. You’ll be seeing a lot of her from now on.”

“Good,” he said. “Goody good.”

And thus A. R. Woresley joined the firm. It was as easy as that. What’s more, he was a man of his word.

He agreed to withhold publication of his discovery. He agreed to assist Yasmin and me in every possible way.

He agreed to construct for us a portable container for liquid nitrogen which we could take with us on our travels.

He agreed to instruct me in the exact procedure for diluting the collected semen and measuring it out into straws for freezing.

Yasmin and I would be the travellers and the collectors.

A. R. Woresley would remain at his post in Cambridge but would establish at the same time in a convenient and secret place a large central freezer, The Semen’s Home.

From time to time, the travellers, Yasmin and I, would return with our spoils and transfer them from the portable suitcase freezer to The Semen’s Home.

I would provide ample funds for everything. I would pay all travelling expenses, hotels, etc., while Yasmin and I were on the road. I would give Yasmin a generous dress allowance so that she might buy herself a superb wardrobe.

It was all straightforward and simple.

I resigned from the university and so did Yasmin.

I found and bought a house not far from where A. R. Woresley lived. It was a plain red-brick affair with four bedrooms and two fairly large living-rooms. Some retired empire builder in years gone by had christened it, of all things, Dunroamin. Dunroamin would be the headquarters of the Home. It would be where Yasmin and I lived during the preparatory period, and it would also be a secret laboratory for A. R. Woresley. I spent a lot of money equipping that lab with apparatus for making liquid nitrogen, with mixers, microscopes, and everything else we needed. I furnished the house. Yasmin and I moved in. But from then on, ours was a business relationship only.

Within a month, A. R. Woresley had constructed our portable liquid nitrogen container. It had double vacuum walls of aluminium and all manner of neat little trays and other contraptions to hold the tiny straws of sperm. It was the size of a large suitcase and what’s more it looked like a suitcase because the outside was sheathed in leather.

A second smaller travelling case contained compartments for ice and a hand-mill and bottles for carrying glycerol, egg yolk, and skimmed milk. Also a microscope for testing the potency of newly collected sperm in the field. Everything was got ready with meticulous care.

Finally, A. R. Woresley set about building The Semen’s Home in the cellar of the house.

13

BY EARLY JUNE 1919, we were almost ready to go. I say almost because we still had not yet agreed upon the list of names. Who would be the great men in the world to be honoured by a visit from Yasmin—and lurking in the background, me? The three of us had many meetings in Dunroamin to discuss this knotty problem. The kings were easy. We wanted all the kings. We wrote them down first:

The Netherlands was out because it had only a queen. Portugal was out because the monarchy had been overthrown in the revolution of 1910. And Monaco was not worth fooling with. There remained only our King George V. After much debate, we decided to leave the old boy alone. It was all just a little bit too much on our own doorstep for comfort, and in any event I had plans for using this particular gentleman in quite another way, as you will see in a moment. We decided, though, to put Edward, Prince of Wales, on the list as a possible extra. Yasmin plus Blister Beetle could roll him over anytime she wished. What’s more, she could hardly wait.