– Wasn't I lucky, Davey, to persuade Ramsay to come to live with me? Such an amusing companion. Was he an amusing schoolmaster? I don't suppose so. But he is a dear man.

– Liesl, you will make Davey think we are lovers. I am here for Liesl's company, certainly, but almost as much because this climate suits my health.

– Let us hope it suits Davey's health, too. You can see he has been seriously unwell. But is your cure coming along nicely, Davey? Don't pretend you aren't working toward a cure.

– How can you tell that, Liesl? He looks better than when I last saw him, and no wonder. But what makes you think he is taking a cure?

– Well, look at him, Ramsay. Do you think I've lived near Zurich so long and can't recognize the "analysand look"? He is obviously working with one of the Jungians, probing his soul and remaking himself. Which doctor do you go to, Davey? I know several of them.

– I can't guess how you know, but there's no use pretending, I suppose. I've been a little more than a year with Fraulein Doktor Johanna von Haller.

– Jo von Haller! I have known her since she was a child. Not friends, really, but we know each other. Well, have you fallen in love with her yet? All her male patients do. It's supposed to be part of the cure. But she is very ethical and never encourages them. I suppose with her successful lawyer husband and her two almost grown-up sons it mightn't do. Oh, yes; she is Frau Doktor, you know. But I suppose you spoke in English and it never came up. Well, after a year with Jo, you need something more lively. I wish we could promise you a really gay Christmas at Sorgenfrei, but it is certain to be dull.

– Don't believe it, Davey. Sorgenfrei is an enchanted castle.

– Nothing of the sort, but it should at least be a little more friendly than a hotel in St. Gall. Can you come back with us now?

And so it was. An hour after finishing lunch I had picked up my things and was sitting beside Liesl in a beautiful sports car, with Ramsay and his wooden leg crammed into the back with the luggage, dashing eastward from St. Gall on the road to Konstanz, and Sorgenfrei – whatever it might be. One of those private clinics, perhaps, that are so frequent in Switzerland? We were mounting all the time, and at last, after half a mile or so through pine woods we emerged onto a shelf on a mountainside, with a breath-taking view – really breath-taking, for the air was very cold and thinner than at St. Gall – and Sorgenfrei commanding it.

Sorgenfrei is like Liesl, a fascinating monstrosity. In England it would be called Gothic Revival; I don't know the European equivalent. Turrets, mullioned windows, a squat tower for an entrance and somewhere at the back a much taller, thinner tower like a lead-pencil rising very high. But bearing everywhere the unmistakable double signature of the nineteenth century and a great deal of money. Inside, it is filled with bearskin rugs, gigantic pieces of furniture on which every surface has been carved within an inch of its life with fruits, flowers, birds, hares, and even, on one thing which seems to be an altar to greed but is more probably a

sideboard, full-sized hounds; six of them with real bronze chains on their collars. This is the dream castle of some magnate of 150 years ago, conceived in terms of the civilization which has given the world, among a host of better things, the music box and the cuckoo clock.

We arrived at about five p.m., and I was taken to this room, which is as big as the boardroom of Castor, and where I am seizing my chance to bring my diary up to the minute. This is exhilarating. Is it the air, or Liesl's company? I am glad I came.

Later: Am I still glad I came? It is after midnight and I have had the most demanding evening since I left Canada.

This house troubles me and I can't yet say why. Magnificent houses, palaces, beautiful country houses, comfortable houses – I know all these either as a guest or a tourist. But this house, which seems at first appearances to be rather a joke, is positively the damnedest house I have ever entered. One might think the architect had gained all his previous experience illustrating Grimm's fairy stories, for the place is full of fantasy – but spooky, early-nineteenth-century fantasy, not the feeble Disney stuff. Yet, on second glance, it seems all to be meant seriously, and the architect was obviously a man of gifts, for though the house is big, it is still a house for people to live in and not a folly. Nor is it a clinic. It is Liesl's home, I gather.

Sorgenfrei. Free of care. Sans Souci. The sort of name someone of limited imagination might give to a country retreat. But there is something here that utterly contradicts the suggestion of the rich bourgeoisie resting from their money-making.

When I went down to dinner I found Ramsay in the library. That is to say, in an English country-house it would have been the library, comfortable and pleasant, but at Sorgenfrei it is too oppressively literary; bookshelves rise to a high, painted ceiling, on which is written in decorative Gothic script what I can just make out to be the Ten Commandments. There is a huge terrestrial globe, balanced by an equally huge celestial one. A big telescope, not much less than a century old, I judged, is mounted at one of the windows that look out on the mountains. On a low table sits a very modern object, which I discovered was five chess-boards mounted one above another in a brass frame; there are chessmen on each board, arranged as for five different games in progress; the boards are made of transparent lucite or some such material, so that it is possible to look down through them from above and see the position of every man. There was a good fire, and Ramsay was warming his legs, one flesh and one artificial, in front of it. He caught my mood at once.

– Extraordinary house, isn't it?

– Very. Is this where you live now?

– I'm a sort of permanent guest. My position is rather in the eighteenth-century mode. You know – people of intellectual tastes kept a philosopher or a scholar around the place. Liesl likes my conversation. I like hers. Funny way for a Canadian schoolmaster to end up, don't you think?

– You were never an ordinary schoolmaster, sir.

– Don't call me sir, Davey. We're old friends. Your father was my oldest friend; if friends is what we were, which I sometimes doubted. But you're not a lad now. You're a notable criminal lawyer; what used to be called "an eminent silk". Of course the problem is that I haven't any name by which all my friends call me. What did you call me at school? Was it Corky? Corky Ramsay? Stupid name, really. Artificial legs haven't been made of cork in a very long time.

– If you really want to know, we called you Biggerlugs. Because of your habit of digging in your ear with your little finger, you know.

– Really? Well, I don't think I like that much. You'd better call me Ramsay, like Liesl.

– I notice she generally calls you "dear Ramsay".

– Yes; we're rather close friends. More than that, for a while. Does that surprise you?

– You've just said I'm an experienced criminal lawyer; nothing surprises me.

– Never say that, Davey. Never, never say that. Especially not at Sorgenfrei.

– You yourself just said it was an extraordinary house.

– Oh, quite so. Rather a marvel, in its peculiar style. But that wasn't precisely what I meant.

We were interrupted by Liesl, who appeared through a door which I had not noticed because it is one of those nineteenth-century affairs, fitted close into the bookshelves and covered with false book-backs, so that it can hardly be seen. She was wearing something very like a man's evening suit, made in dark velvet, and looked remarkably elegant. I was beginning not to notice her Gorgon face. Ramsay turned to her rather anxiously, I thought.