The agent ridiculed the idea.
"Why, your Grand Grace," he cried, "there won't be anything of that sort. You ain't going to be starred as a comic. You're a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with lights down and the cinematograph going. We can easily fake the pictures."
The Grand Duke made another objection.
"I understand," he said, "it is etiquette for music-hall artists in their spare time to eat—er—fried fish with their fingers. Must I do that? I doubt if I could manage it."
Mr Quhayne once more became the human semaphore.
"S'elp me! Of course you needn't! All the leading pros, eat it with a spoon. Bless you, you can be the refined gentleman on the Halls same as anywhere else. Come now, your Grand Grace, is it a deal? Four hundred and fifty chinking o'Goblins a week for one hall a night, and press-agented at eight hundred and seventy-five. S'elp me! Lauder doesn't get it, not in England."
The Grand Duke reflected. The invasion has proved more expensive than he had foreseen. The English are proverbially a nation of shopkeepers, and they had put up their prices in all the shops for his special benefit. And he was expected to do such a lot of tipping. Four hundred and fifty a week would come in uncommonly useful.
"Where do I sign?" he asked, extending his hand for the agreement.
Five minutes later Mr. Quhayne was urging his taxidriver to exceed the speed-limit in the direction of Tottenham.