"It was plain James Bond who wrote that letter—just as it is plain James Bond who is speaking at this moment. Somehow, he seems to have lost sight of his part of 'Chorus'! 'Cynthia' did not contribute a single phrase to the letter. It must have been a good letter, I think. It had an immediate result. Within less than twenty-four hours it brought a very busy, and distinguished man from town down here into our quiet backwater to see us."
"The Duke?" the King exclaimed.
"The Duke," Uncle Bond acknowledged. "Let there be no mistake about my position, at the outset, my boy. I am a partisan of the Duke!
"The Duke and I had some talk, but he spent most of his time with Judith, and the Imps. Judith—liked him. The Imps—took to him. We gave him tea. When he left he was good enough to say that I had given him a pleasure extremely rare in the experience of an old man. I had introduced him to four new friends! He said other agreeable things. But the most important thing he said, perhaps, was that, with certain precautionary measures taken, which he himself would arrange, he saw no reason why—the gates of Paradise should be shut on a younger, and more fortunate visitor than himself.
"My dear boy, I have always liked your reckless audacity. I sympathize heartily with you in your distaste for police surveillance. But that you should consistently give the police the slip, and career about here, alone in your car, when the men responsible for your safety believed that you were fast asleep, in bed, in town—in the present state of the country, the risks, for you, for us, were altogether too great. Think what our position would have been if anything had happened to you! But for some time past, from the day of the Duke's visit to us, those risks have been avoided. Scotland Yard have been on their mettle. They have never lost sight of you. When I went downstairs, just before lunch, I found half a dozen plain clothes men making themselves comfortable in the kitchen. They have grown quite at home with us. And today they tell me, special precautions are being taken. A battalion of the Guards, I understand, is to put a picket line round the house. My dear boy, restrain your impatience! You will not see them. The police have strict orders never to intrude their presence upon you. The military, I have no doubt, will have similar orders. From the first, the Duke has been as anxious—as any of us—that you should continue to enjoy the full benefits of your incognito, here, in Paradise.
"And that brings me, having finished my own explanations, to the explanation which I am so eager to demand from you, in turn, my boy. How did the Duke contrive that you should come here, in the present crisis—they told me downstairs that Martial Law has been proclaimed!—without betraying the fact that he had been here himself?"
All the King's senses had been numbed by the rapid succession of surprises with which Uncle Bond had attacked him. His capacity for wonder had long since been exhausted. It seemed to him now that nothing would ever surprise him again. A feeling of utter helplessness oppressed him. It seemed to him that he was in the grip, that he had been made the plaything, of an implacable, an irresistible power. But Uncle Bond's question served to arouse a momentary flash of his old self-assertion within him. He had been deceived, he had been managed, he had been fooled to the top of his bent—but, in this matter, at any rate, he had asserted himself; in this matter, at any rate, he had had his own way.
"The Duke did not contrive that I should come here," he exclaimed. "I chose to come here. It was—my way of going on strike."
"You startled me by saying something like that before, my boy," Uncle Bond remarked. "What do you mean, precisely, by—your way of going on strike?"
"The whole trouble is a strike. The Labour people have called a universal, lightning strike from twelve noon, today," the King explained impatiently. "The Duke says a little company of revolutionary extremists are behind it all. They want to run up the Red Flag. I told the Duke that if there was one man in the whole country who was justified in striking, in leaving his work, it seemed to me, I was that man. And I said I would come here. Coming here was my way of going on strike."