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Caucasian legend, night of the full moon, Mr. Hyde stuff. Whereas Colonel Hayseed said he didn’t know anything.”
    “Hayburn.” Emma tucked into the food and let him continue with the explanations. It kept him happy. He was turning into a man of logic and intellect since he began writing his history of the second world war. “I say,” she interrupted suddenly, “you could call your book Intelligence Is Not Enough.”
    “Mrs. Peel, your Squab a la Soleil will be getting cold.” He sipped a glass of white wine and the frown was replaced by a contented smile. “I had these hens specially sent up from Cornwall on Monday. No other birds are quite the same.”
    “Delicious,” she pronounced. “The nice thing about your hospitality is that the food is always excellent. This old house is draughty, I expect it’s damp, and you have to walk about on your knees to avoid the beams. But the food is always superb.”
    Steed looked around with injured pride. “I had the House & Garden people down here last week. They were vastly impressed. I told them that next Christmas I shall roast an ox over the fire.” He nodded impressively. “Of course, I didn’t show them the garden. Some aspects of the all-round man are not in my nature.”
    “You should get a man in,” said Emma.
    “I suppose so. But I regard those weeds as a challenge. One of these weekends, I tell myself, I shall buy a spade or whatever one needs and I shall attack the indiscipline of nature and restore order. It would be admitting defeat to hire a man.”
    When the four course lunch was finished they retired to the sitting room for brandy and coffee. Steed glanced through the files from the Jubilee Street headquarters and clucked from time to time. While she waited Emma browsed through the books and blew dust off the porcelain. Steed had a woman, three mornings a week, but she didn’t do very much polishing. Two days’ washing up, probably, and God knows how much laundry, followed by a quick sweep round if there was time. Emma smiled at the abridged Gibbon on the desk beside Carlyle’s History of the French devolution. Steed was finding out how history should be written. The thunderous phrase and the mighty rebuke to dead statesmen.
    “Tonight there was a sensation,” Steed suddenly read aloud. “A colour supplement girl in a multicoloured camel coat and a hot pink dress broke up the meeting. She jeered at the fascists for being negative. Afterwards she drank the colonel under the table and then drove off in a small fast car. She might be the fun girl she seems or she might be a government agent taking time off from the serious business of world communism. If so, I’d say she enjoys her work and might be dangerous.”
    Steed smiled exasperatingly and refrained from comment.
    “Let’s assume,” Emma snapped, “that I’m a government agent. What do you make of these wretched Werewolves?”
    “Cranks,” said Steed. “They could safely be left to the police, if it weren’t for these mysterious references to a figurehead and immense wealth. You’d better carry on with the job.”
    She put down her brandy glass very carefully before speaking. “What will you be doing?”
    “Working, Mrs. Peel. I shall be sorting these things into the right perspective. Fascism, after all, isn’t a sudden phenomenon. And Hitler was neither the first nor last—”
     “Damn your history. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to chase up the immense wealth? It would save us a lot of embarrassment if we could have them put away for the Great Train Robbery or forgery.”
    “Never under-rate history, Mrs. Peel.” At his most infuriating, Steed walked solemnly over to his desk and picked up the precious manuscript. “Let me read you some of it. I think you’ll find it illuminating.”
    Emma drank the rest of her brandy and poured another. If Steed had gone off his rocker through unaccustomed introspection she would need some fortifying. She had always known Steed