I tried hard now to give the impression of one eager to please. I regretted my earlier truculence; it made my present pose of co-operativeness a little less plausible. Winter must have been accustomed to the job though, and to subjects who were abject. After a few minutes he waved an arm at the two bouncers, who left the room silently.
Winter had gotten on to the subject of international relations and geopolitics now, and seem to be fascinated by my commonplace replies. I attempted once or twice to ask why it was necessary to quiz me closely on matters of general information, but was firmly guided back to the answering of the questions.
He covered geography and recent history thoroughly with emphasis on the period 1879-1910, and then started in on a biographic list; all I knew about one name after another. Most of them I'd never heard of, a few were minor public figures. He quizzed me in detail on two Italians, Cocino and Maxoni. He could hardly believe I'd never heard of them. He seemed fascinated by many of my replies.
"Niven an actor?" he said incredulously. "Never heard of Crane Talbot?" and when I described Churchill's role in recent affairs, he laughed uproariously.
After forty minutes of this one-sided discussion, a buzzer sounded faintly, and another uniformed man entered, placed a good-sized box on the corner of the desk, and left. Winter ignored the interruption.
Another twenty minutes of questions went by. Who was the present monarch of Anglo-Germany? Winter asked. What was the composition of the royal family, the ages of the children? I exhausted my knowledge of the subject. What was the status of the Viceroyalty of India? Explain the working of the Dominion arrangements of Australia, Northern America, Cabotsland...? I was appalled at the questions; the author of them must have been insane. It was almost impossible to link the garbled reference to non-existent political subdivisions and institutions to reality. I answered as matter-of-factly as possible. At least Winter did not seem to be much disturbed by my revision of his distorted version of affairs.
At last Winter rose, moved over to his desk, and motioned me to a chair beside it. As I pulled the chair out, I glanced into the box on the desk. I saw magazines, folded cloth, coins—and the butt of a small automatic protruding from under a copy of the World Almanac. Winter had turned away, reaching into a small cabinet behind the desk. My hand darted out, scooped up the pistol, and dropped it into my pocket as I seated myself.
Winter turned back with a blue glass bottle. "Now let's have a drop and I'll attempt to clear up some of your justifiable confusion, Mr. Bayard," he said genially. "What would you like to know?" I ignored the bottle.
"Where am I?" I said.
"In the city of Stockholm, Sweden."