“Um,” said Rupert thoughtfully, rolling his tongue round his mouth. “Just a teeny bit too much gin, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t hedge, and don’t pretend you’re not still sober, because I know perfectly well you are. Where does your Overlord friend come from, and what’s he doing here?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Rupert. “I thought I’d explained it to everybody. You couldn’t have been around — of course, you were hiding up in the library.” He chuckled in a manner which George found offensive. “It’s the library, you know, that brought Rashy here.”
“How extraordinary!”
“Why?” George paused, realizing that this would require tact. Rupert was very proud of his peculiar collection.
“Er — well, when you consider what the Overlords know about science, I should hardly think they’d be interested in psychic phenomena and all that sort of nonsense.”
“Nonsense or not,” replied Rupert, “they’re interested in human psychology, and I’ve got some books that can teach them a lot. Just before I moved here some Deputy Under-Overlord, or Over-Underlord, got in touch with me and asked if they could borrow about fifty of my rarest volumes. One of the keepers of the British Museum Library had put him on to me, it seemed. Of course, you can guess what I said.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Well, I replied very politely that it had taken me twenty years to get my library together. They were welcome to study my books, but they’d darn well have to read them here. So Rashy came along and has been absorbing about twenty volumes a day. I’d love to know what he makes of them.”
George thought this over, then shrugged his shoulders in disgust.