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where he switched on an overhead light and took a look at the football news. The names weren’t out yet.
    The geyser took twenty minutes to produce a decent bath. He stood there skimming through the paper. Mussolini had made a speech. Monsieur Laval had made a speech. Mr. Eden had made a speech. James thanked heaven that he did not have to make speeches. He supposed some people liked doing it. There was no accounting for tastes.
    He turned to another column and cocked an eyebrow at a highly decorative picture of Ambrose Sylvester. The famous novelist’s famous profile was displayed. James, who had stuck in the middle of Links in the Chain, wondered why some novelists were famous and some were not. Everyone raved about Ambrose Sylvester—that is to say, all the women did. Daphne, Kitty, Chloe, Linda, and Susan all declared that his profile was simply divine. He supposed they also read his books. He didn’t seem to have written very much—three novels—nothing for the last five years or so. The legend under the photograph said, “When are we to have another link in the Chain?”
    He left Ambrose Sylvester, and read without interest the odds that were being offered at Hollywood on a popular film-star’s matrimonial chances. He was just going to turn over the page, when his eye was caught by a small paragraph tucked away in the right-hand corner. It was headed Windfall for our Dumb Friends. But that wasn’t what had caught his eye, it was the name immediately below it—Lady Clementa Tolhache.
    James stared at it as he might have stared at a fiery disc, or a blue dragon, or a luminous snake, or any other product of a disordered imagination. Not much more than an hour ago he had decided that there was no such name as Clementa. He did not find it at all easy to reverse this decision. He preferred to disbelieve the evidence of his senses. After all, if you see fiery spots floating in the air, you don’t believe they are really there—not unless you are very far gone.
    He looked away from the paragraph and gazed fixedly at one of Gertrude’s pictures which hung on the farther wall. It depicted a greyish female with an enormous body and a very small head in the act of eating a bright green apple with red spots on it. There was a huge lobster in the foreground, and a thing like a bright blue tadpole in the right-hand top corner. This work was called Eve, and James thought it was the most frightful thing he had ever seen. The fact that he now remained looking at it for some moments showed how much he had been thrown off his balance. As a matter of fact, he was not seeing it at all, he was seeing that ridiculous name, and when after blinking rapidly several times he looked back at the paragraph he saw it still—Clementa—Lady Clementa Tolhache. There it was, in print. He read it three times, and then finished the paragraph: “Lady Clementa Tolhache has made a generous bequest to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There are a number of other legacies, but the bulk of her estate passes to her great-nephew Mr. John Jernyngham West, at present with his regiment in India.”
    James felt exasperated to the last degree. Without the slightest warning life had become completely mad. He had had an unbelievable adventure with an impossibly named girl who pitched him an incredible tale about her Aunt Clementa, and here was a paragraph featuring Aunt Clementa’s will. And as if that wasn’t enough, it also featured Jack West—old J.J. It couldn’t be anyone else. There weren’t two John Jernyngham Wests in the Army, he’d take his oath on that. No, it was J.J. who had fagged for him at Wellington, and he was Lady Clementa Tolhache’s great-nephew and heir. The paragraph said so. He was surprised at its moderation in the matter of the diamond necklace. It might have insisted on his believing in that too.
    He went down to his bath obstinately