“I noticed your manners this morning.”
“The devil you did.”
Anthony rose and paced up and down the room. His brow was slightly wrinkled, and it was some minutes before he spoke.
“Jimmy,” he said at last. “Stylptitch died in Paris. What’s the point of sending a manuscript from Paris to London via Africa?”
Jimmy shook his head helplessly.
“I don’t know.”
“Why not do it up in a nice little parcel and send it by post?”
“Sounds a damn sight more sensible, I agree.”
“Of course,” continued Anthony, “I know that Kings and Queens and Government officials are prevented by etiquette from doing anything in a simple, straightforward fashion. Hence King’s Messengers and all that. In medieval days you gave a fellow a signet ring as a sort of Open Sesame. ‘The King’s Ring! Pass, my Lord!’ And usually it was the other fellow who had stolen it. I always wonder why some bright lad never hit on the expedient of copying the ring—making a dozen or so, and selling them at a hundred ducats apiece. They seem to have had no initiative in the Middle Ages.”
Jimmy yawned.