Come into my Parlour by Dennis Wheatley Page A

engaged.
    â€œI do hope you manage to fix things up all right,” he said, when she had finished. “It must be rotten to be tied up to a chap that you no longer care about. Anyhow, I’ll make darn certain it’s him who is living at this place, and not some of those Nazi so-and-sos, before you go anywhere near it.”
    She told him then that Sir Pellinore had let her into the secret of his cashiering, and that she thought it far braver for a young man to submit to such an ordeal in the interests of his country than any heroics would have been that he could perform in a battle; but he replied quite lightly:
    â€œOh, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. The day after I had committed myself to Sir Pellinore I would have given the earth to get out of it. The time while we were setting the stage for our little act was pretty grim, too; but once the balloon went up the fun began. People’s reactions were so unexpected and often quite comic. They hurt at times, because some that I would have put my last quid on as good as spat in my eye; but others, some of them people I hardly knew, came forward and practically offered to perjure themselves for me. There’s nothing like a spot of real bother to show you what your friends are made of.” Then, without disclosing its object, he gave her an amusing account of the case.
    As they were walking back, Erika remarked: “Gregory Sallust told me that you have the same name as a famous character in English history. Are you descended from him?”
    â€œInfamous, you mean,” he laughed. “Piers, or Pierce, Gaveston was the wicked favourite of Edward the Second. He used to take the King out to night clubs when he ought to have been attending to dreary affairs of State. The Barons were a gloomy lot of killjoys and didn’t like poor Piers a bit; they caught him and did him in, in the end. My family claim to be descended from this young spark and apparently thought it would be amusing to christen me after him. Fortunately both my parents are dead, so they’ll never know how suitable their choice was, as I, too, shall always be regarded as a bad hat.”
    This confidential chat had the effect of drawing Erika and Piers closer together than all their casual conversations in the past weeks had done, and she felt that she was lucky to have such a likeable companion for her escort.
    On the Friday night she told the Matron that she was leaving to do some secretarial work for Sir Pellinore in London, and said good-bye to a number of people she had come to know in the convalescent wing. Afterwards she had a long heart-to-heart chat with Madeleine, and was seen off by her and the Professor when she left with Piers next morning.
    That afternoon she found that Sir Pellinore had made an appointment for her with the barber who worked for one of the M.I. Department. He dyed her hair a deep, rich brown and took a shade off the corners of her eyebrows. A photograph of her was then taken, and after dinner that night Sir Pellinore gave her a Swedish passport in the name of Madame Astrid Largerlöf and all the other papers that she would require. On the morning of Sunday, the 10th of August, he waved them good-bye from the steps of his house and a taxi took them to a wartime department of the Air Ministry situated in Holborn.
    They were there as instructed, at half past nine, but, although the journey down to the airfield in Kent, from which they were to depart took only a little over an hour, their aircraft did not take off till nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. The delay seemed interminable, pointless and exasperating; which caused Piers during one dreary wait to remark:
    â€œWhat extraordinary people airmen are. I’ve had quite a lot to do with them in the past two years and operationally they are absolutely wizard. I’ve seen squadrons go up to fight in the Battle of Britain, and squadrons of bombers leave on long trips to