The King made a very unsuitable proposal regarding the Librarian, which I do not think it proper to repeat. It was increasingly obvious that his character and vocabulary had been formed in the Navy.

“Here’s a rum start!” he continued. “My time is short, and I need expert help. Who were Mr. Massey’s correspondents?”

I was flummoxed by that one. “Oh, just about everybody,” I replied.

“Any collectors?” he asked. “You know our rules, I suppose; I can’t call up anybody who isn’t represented somehow in this room. Supernatural Regulations 64 A. What about my son? He was a very fair collector; not in my class, of course, but good enough. Any letters from him in these boxes?”

It seemed likely, and I nodded. The King began to shout in a quarter-deck voice. “Bertie!” he roared. “Bertie, come here at once; I need you. Bertie!”

A voice spoke behind me—a voice I remembered well—the quiet, careful voice of a man who has overcome a distressing stammer.

“Father,” it said; “I’ve been looking all over the Commonwealth for you. We are due to haunt the chartroom of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. Do hurry.”

“Bertie, my boy,” shouted King George the Fifth. “We’ve got a good ten minutes. My three-penny with the reversed border is in here someplace, and we’ve got to find it. Hurry up, boy, hurry up!”

Nothing in my experience is stranger than the scene that followed. There was George the Fifth, and with him George the Sixth, in full Naval kit, tearing open those carefully sealed filing-cabinets. They severed the rope bindings with their swords (I had never before believed that those swords would cut anything) and tore out double handfuls of papers, which they threw about the room until it was like a snowstorm. The monarchs were in the grip of collectors’ mania—than which there are few more terrible passions in the world. The short King and the tall King whisked about the room with extraordinary speed, searching, sifting, seeking, while I dodged hither and thither, expostulating and now and then hopping out of reach of their terrible swords.

What time passed, I cannot tell; a few minutes, I suppose, though it seemed hours. Then George the Sixth, far too excited to speak, discovered in some obscure corner an envelope, upon which a few words had been written, and thrust it at his father. The senior monarch was overjoyed; as he seized it, the blue eyes filled with tears.

“Bertie, my boy,” he sobbed; “you’ve found it! Good fella! Oh, good fella!”

But my distress was greater than before. “You can’t take it away!” I cried. “You mustn’t!”

“Who’s going to stop me?” said King George the Fifth.

Who, indeed? Consider: this was a ghost; the ghost of a king, armed with a sword that seemed to have the very unghostly property of being able to cut real objects. Such a threat was more than enough to daunt me. In my anguish I cried aloud: “Oh help!” I sighed, and then, remembering my national obligation to be fully bilingual I added “Au secours! Au secours!”

I like to think it was the bilingualism that did it. A soft, self-possessed voice behind me said, “Perhaps I might be of assistance?”

All three of us turned to see who had spoken. It was George the Sixth, oddly enough, who spoke first.

“Mr. Prime Minister,” said he.

Yes, that was who it was. Not any Prime Minister, but preeminently and solely the Prime Minister. That lock of hair that always dangled over the forehead; the lips parted in childlike wonderment; those exquisitely beautiful brown eyes, of which an Edwardian beauty might have been vain; the expensive clothes so negligently worn; above all that air of imperturbable, toad-like dignity: it could be but one person. It was William Lyon Mackenzie King.

“There are a great many letters from me here,” said Mr. King, “and when I sensed that I might be of assistance to my dear old friend and colleague, Vincent Massey, I made haste to come.”

For a moment my senses swam. But as rapidly as I could I explained the situation.

“It is clear that the ahnvelope must remain where it is,” said Mackenzie King.

“What!” roared George the Fifth, in such a Navy bellow as I had not yet heard. “Look here, Mr. Prime Minister: I know just as much about constitutional monarchy, and Dominion status, and the Statute of Westminster and all that frightful bilge as you do, but fair’s fair. It’s my stamp, and I want it.”

“Your Majesty has failed to remember that in the case of a letter, only the literary content continues to be the property of the writer; the physical letter—paper, ink, and of course the stamp—become the indisputable property of the receiver. Your Majesty would not wish to rob one of his subjects of a personal possession. You would not think, for instance, of taking Mr. Massey’s cufflinks, or his cigarette case.”

“But it’s a stamp,” murmured the King; it was not the voice of a monarch, or of an Admiral, but of a collector, and it was so wistful that my heart ached toward him. For I too am a collector, though not of stamps.

“He’s got you up a tree, Father,” said George the Sixth, hardly less dejected.

“He always had us all up trees,” murmured his father.

But Mackenzie King was magnanimous in victory. “Canada would not wish to be ungenerous. Perhaps you might come back from time to time and look at it, finger it, play with it—even perhaps lick it,” said he.

This last was an unhappy inspiration. The senior monarch fixed him with a look of fathomless scorn.

“Anybody who would lick a unique specimen would fabricate a constitutional issue,” said he, and Mackenzie King veiled his beautiful eyes and moved his lips, as though in silent explanation of some old, unhappy, far-off thing. “Still—could I come here once a year?”

“I think that is for the Master to say,” said Mackenzie King.

It was at this moment that I was visited with an inspiration. “Will your Majesty grant me a favour?” said I.

“Anything in reason,” said George the Fifth. “What would you like? What do you college-wallahs fancy? Star of India? Posthumous, naturally. You’d get it when you became one of us.”

I knew why he was so generous; he wanted to get at that stamp. But before I could speak, Mackenzie King intervened.

“Your Majesty has forgotten that Canadians are not permitted to accept titles, even posthumously.”

King George the Fifth spoke at length on that subject, in terms I shall not repeat. His simple, sailor’s eloquence burned like a refiner’s fire. I was lost in wonder at some of the uses he made of the simplest Anglo-Saxon words, but Mackenzie King’s eyes were once more closed. I sensed that he was thinking of his mother. When the King had finished, I spoke again.

“It was not a personal favour I sought, but something for the College. We have had some ghosts here—shabby, detrimental spooks who ran the place down. Now, if your Majesty—and of course you also, sir,” said I, looking at George the Sixth, “wish to come here to look at this remarkable stamp, you are welcome at any time. All I ask is that for some part of your yearly visit you will permit yourselves to be seen. It would do so much to establish a good College tone.”

Before the King could answer, Mackenzie King had spoken again. “If any monarch, or monarchs, are to set foot—even posthumous foot—upon Canadian soil, it is desirable that a Canadian Minister of the Crown should be with them at all times,” said he. And because ghosts are not always careful to conceal their thoughts, I could hear, passing through his mind, the objectionable phrase, “to keep an eye on them”.

It was at this moment that my inspiration completed itself in a dazzling flash. I spoke in a courtier-like tone which I had not found necessary with the two Georges. “Mr. Prime Minister,” said I; “you were certainly included in the invitation.”

He seemed dubious, even then, and closed his eyes. In that instant I winked at the two kings; like the sailors they were at heart, they winked back.