My Uncle Oswald Read online

This will introduce to you a dear friend of mine, Lady Victoria Nottingham. She is travelling alone to Madrid to clear up a small matter that has to do with an estate that has come to her through her Spanish maternal grandmother.

  My request is that you see Lady Victoria briefly and in absolute privacy. She is having some trouble with the local authorities over title deeds and I am sure that if you yourself, after she has explained her problem, will drop a hint with the right people, then everything will go smoothly for her.

  I am taking you, my dear Alfonso, very deeply into my confidence when I tell you that Lady Victoria is an especially close personal friend of mine. Let us leave it at that and say no more. But I know I can rely upon you to keep this intelligence entirely to yourself.

  When you receive this note, the lady in question will be at the Ritz Hotel, Madrid. Do please send her a message as soon as possible granting her a private audience.

  Burn this letter when read, and make no reply to me.

  I am at your service at all times.

  With warmest personal regards,

  George RI

  Both A. R. Woresley and Yasmin looked up at me with eyes popping.

  'Where did you get this notepaper?' Woresley said.

  'I had it printed.'

  'Did you write this yourself?'

  'I did and I'm rather proud of it. It's a very fair imitation of the King's handwriting. And the signature is almost perfect. I practised it for days.'

  'You'll be had up for forgery! You'll be sent to prison!'

  'No, I won't,' I said. 'Alfonso won't dare tell a soul. Don't you see the beauty of it. Our great and noble King is hinting that he is having a backstairs affair with Yasmin. That, my dear sir, is very, very confidential and dangerous material. And don't forget, European royalty is the most tightly-knit and exclusive club in the world. They work together. Every ruddy one of them is related to the other in some crazy way. They're tangled up like spaghetti. No - there is not the slightest chance of Alfonso letting the King of England down. He'll see Yasmin at once. He'll be dying to see her. He'll want to take a good look at this woman who is the secret mistress of old George Five. Remember also that right now our King is the most respected of all the royals. He's just won the war.'

  'Cornelius,' A. R. Woresley said, 'you frighten me to death. You'll have us all behind bars.'

  'I think it's terrific,' Yasmin said. 'It's brilliant. It's bound to work.'

  'What if a secretary opens the envelope?' Woresley said.

  'That won't happen,' I said. I took a bunch of envelopes from the drawer and found the right one and gave it to Woresley. It was a long high-quality white envelope with the red royal coat of arms top left, and BUCKINGHAM PALACE top right. In the King's handwriting, I had written on it:

  His Royal Highness, King Alfonso XIII

  Personal and Confidential. To be

  opened only by HRH himself.

  'That should do it,' I said. 'The envelope will be delivered to the Oriente Palace in Madrid by my own hand.'

  A. R. Woresley opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

  'I have a roughly similar letter for each of the other nine kings,' I said. 'Obviously there are small changes. Each message is tailored to the individual. Haakon of Norway, for instance, is married to King George's sister, Maud - I'll bet you didn't know that - and so there we finish up with "Give my love to Maud, but I trust you absolutely to make no mention to her of this private little piece of business." And so on and so on. It's foolproof, my dear Arthur.' I was calling him by his first name now.

  'You appear to have done your homework, Cornelius.' He himself, in the manner of all dons and schoolmasters, refused to use my given name. 'But how do you propose to get in to see all the others, the non-kings?'

  'There will be no problem,' I said. 'Not many men will refuse to see a girl like Yasmin when she knocks on the door. You certainly didn't. I'll bet you began dribbling with excitement as soon as she came into the lab.'

  That shut him up.

  'So can we do the King of Spain first?' Yasmin asked. 'He's only thirty-three and from his photograph he's rather dishy.'

  'Very well,' I said. 'Madrid first stop. But then we must move into France. Renoir and Monet are top priority. One's seventy-eight and the other seventy-nine. I want to nobble them both before it's too late.'

  'With Blister Beetle it'll be heart attack time for those old boys,' Yasmin said.

  'We'll reduce the dose,' I said.

  'Now see here, Cornelius,' A. R. Woresley said. 'I won't be a party to the murder of Mr Renoir or Mr Monet. I don't want blood on my hands.'

  'You'll have a lot of valuable sperm on your hands and that's all,' I said. 'Leave it to us.'

  14

  The stage was set. Yasmin and I packed our bags and left for Madrid. We had with us the vital liquid nitrogen suitcase, the smaller case containing glycerol, etc., a supply of Prestat's best chocolate truffles and four ounces of Blister Beetle powder. I must again mention that in those days the examination of luggage by customs was virtually non-existent. There would be no trouble with our curious suitcases. We crossed the Channel and travelled to Madrid via Paris by Wagon-Lits. The trip took only nineteen hours altogether. In Madrid, we registered at the Ritz where we had booked separate rooms by telegram, one for Oswald Cornelius Esquire and one for Lady Victoria Nottingham.

  The next morning I went to the Oriente Palace, where I was stopped at the gates by a couple of soldiers on guard duty. Waving my envelope and shouting, 'This is for the King!' in Spanish, I reached the big main entrance. I pulled the bell-knob. A flunkey opened one of the doors. I then spoke a Spanish sentence that I had committed to memory, which said, 'This is for His Majesty Alfonso from King George of Great Britain. It is most urgent.' I walked away.

  Back at the hotel, I settled down with a book in Yasmin's room to await developments.

  'What if he's out of town?' she said.

  'He isn't,' I said. 'The flag was flying over the Palace.'

  'What if he doesn't answer?'

  'He'll answer. He wouldn't dare not to, after reading that letter on that notepaper.'

  'But can he read English?'

  'All kings can read English,' I said. 'It's a part of their education. Alfonso speaks perfect English.'

  Just before lunchtime, there was a knock on the door. Yasmin opened it and there stood the manager of the hotel himself with a look of importance on his face. He had a silver tray in his hand on which lay a white envelope. 'An urgent message, my lady,' he said, bowing. Yasmin took the envelope, thanked him and closed the door.

  'Rip it open!' I said.

  She ripped it open and took out a letter handwritten on magnificent Palace notepaper.

  My Dear Lady Victoria, it said. We shall be pleased to see you at four o'clock this afternoon. If you will give your name at the gates you will be admitted immediately.

  Alfonso R

  'Simple, isn't it?' I said.

  'What does he mean we?'

  'All monarchs refer to themselves as we. You have three hours to get ready and be at the Palace gates,' I said. 'Let's fix the chocolate.'

  I had obtained from Prestat a number of very small and elegant boxes, each holding no more than six truffles. Yasmin was to give one box to the King as a small present. She was to say to him, 'I have brought you, sire, a little present of chocolates. They're delicious. George has them specially made for me.' She was then to open the box and say with a most disarming smile, 'Do you mind if I steal one? I simply can't resist them.' She pops one into her mouth, then picks up the marked chocolate and holds it out to the King delicately between forefinger and thumb, saying, 'Try one.' The poor man will be charmed. He will eat the choc just as A. R. Woresley did in the lab. And that will be that. Thereafter, Yasmin will simply have to carry on nine minutes of flirtatious small talk without getting entangled in any complicated reason for her visit.

  I got out the Blister Beetle powder and we prepared the fa
tal truffle. 'No double doses this time,' Yasmin said. 'I don't want to have to use the hatpin.' I agreed. She herself marked the truffle with small scratches on the surface of the chocolate.

  It was June and very hot in Madrid. Yasmin dressed with great care but wore the lightest possible clothes. I gave her a rubbery thing from my large stock and she put it in her purse.

  'For God's sake don't fail to get it on him,' I said. 'That's what it's all about. And hurry back here with it quickly afterwards. Come straight to my room next door.' I wished her good luck and off she went.

  In my own room I made careful preparations for dealing with the sperm as soon as it arrived. This was my very first time under actual field conditions and I wanted to get everything just right. I will admit I felt nervous. Yasmin was at the Palace. She was giving Blister Beetle to the King of Spain and after that there would be a good old wrestling match and I only hoped she would handle things properly.

  The time went slowly. I finished my preparations. I leaned out of the window and watched the carriages in the street below. Once or twice a motor car came by, but there were not so many here as in London. I looked at my watch. It was after six o'clock. I made myself a whiskey and soda. I carried it to the open window and sipped it there. I was hoping to see Yasmin stepping out of a carriage at the hotel entrance. I didn't see her. I got myself a second whiskey. I sat down and tried to read a book. It was now six-thirty. She had been gone two and a half hours. Suddenly there was a loud knocking on my door. I got up and opened it. Yasmin, with cheeks afire, swept into the room.

  'I did it!' she cried, waving her handbag at me like a flag. 'I've got it! It's in here!'

  'Give it to me quick,' I said.

  There was at least three ccs of royal semen in the knotted rubbery thing Yasmin handed to me. I put a drop under the microscope to test it for potency. The tiny royal squigglers were squiggling madly all over the place, supremely active. 'First rate stuff,' I said. 'Let me get this into the straws and frozen up before you say a word. After that, I want to hear exactly what happened.'

  Yasmin went to her room to bathe and change. I set about the business in hand. A. R. Woresley and I had agreed that we would make exactly fifty straws of semen for each person. More than that would take up too much room in our travelling sperm-freezer. I set about diluting the semen with egg yolk, skimmed milk and glycerol. I mixed it. I measured it out with a graduated eye-dropper into the little rubber straws. I sealed the straws. I put them on ice for half an hour. I exposed them to nitrogen vapour for a few minutes. Then finally I lowered them gently into the liquid nitrogen and closed the container. It was done. We now had fifty doses of the King of Spain's semen, and strong doses at that. The equation was simple. He gave us three ccs originally. Three ccs would contain approximately three thousand million sperm and those three thousand million, when divided up into fifty doses, would produce a potency of sixty million sperm per dose. This was exactly three times A. R. Woresley's optimum figure of twenty million per dose. In other words, the Spanish Royal straws were of prime potency. I was elated. I rang the bell for service and ordered a bottle of Krug on ice.

  Yasmin came in looking cool and clean. The champagne arrived at the same time. We waited until the servant had opened the bottle and filled the glasses and left the room. 'Now,' I said, 'tell me all.'

  'It was amazing,' she said. 'The preliminaries went exactly as you said they would. I was ushered into an enormous room with Goyas and El Grecos all over the walls. The King was at the far end sitting behind a huge desk. He was dressed in a plain suit. He stood up and came forward to greet me. He had a moustache and was not a bad looking little fellow. He kissed my hand. And my God, Oswald, you should have seen the way he fawned all over me because he thought I was the King of England's mistress. "Madame," he said, "I am enchanted to meet you. And how is our mutual friend?"

  ' "He has a slight touch of gout," I said, "but otherwise he's in splendid condition." Then I went through the chocolate routine and he ate his little truffle like a lamb and with a good deal of relish. "These are magnificent," he said, chewing away. "I must have my ambassador send me a few pounds." As he swallowed the last bit of chocolate, I noted the time on my watch. "Pray be seated," he said.

  'There were four big sofa things in the room and before sitting down I examined them carefully. I wanted to choose the softest and most practical of the four. I knew that in nine minutes' time the one I selected would become a battlefield.'

  'Good thinking,' I said.

  'I chose an enormous sort of chaise longue covered in plum-coloured velvet. The King remained standing and as we talked he strolled about the room with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to look regal.

  'I said, "Our mutual friend has asked me to tell you, sire, that if you yourself should ever require any confidential assistance in his country, you could rely upon him absolutely."

  ' "I shall bear it in mind," he said.

  ' "He sent you another message as well, your Majesty."

  ' "What was that?"

  ' "You promise you won't be cross if I tell you?"

  ' "Certainly not, madame. Tell me what else he said."

  ' "He said, you tell that good-looking Alfonso to keep his hands off my girl. That's word for word what he said, your Majesty." Little Alfonso laughed and clapped his hands and said, "Dear lady, I shall respect his wishes but only with the greatest difficulty." '

  'Yasmin,' I said, 'you're a clever little bitch.'

  'Oh, it was such fun,' she said. 'I loved twisting him around. He was madly curious about my so-called affair but he didn't quite dare to mention it. He kept putting leading questions to me. He said, "I presume you have a house in London?"

  ' "Of course," I said. "I have my own London house where I entertain in normal fashion. Then I have a small very private place in Windsor Great Park where a certain person can call on me when he is out riding. And I have a cottage on the Sandring-ham Estate where again that certain person can pop in for a cup of tea when he is out shooting pheasants. As you probably know, he adores shooting."

  ' "I know that," Alfonso said. "And I hear he is the best shot in England."

  ' "Yes," I said, "and in more ways than one, your Majesty."

  ' "Ha!" he said. "I see you are a funny lady."'

  'Were you watching the time?' I said to Yasmin.

  'You bet I was. I've forgotten exactly what he was saying when the moment arrived, but the interesting thing is that he froze right in the middle of a sentence just as old Woresley had done in the lab. Here it comes, I told myself. Put on the boxing gloves.'

  'Did he jump you?'

  'No, he didn't. Don't forget Woresley had had a double dose.'

  'Ah yes.'

  'Anyway, he was standing in front of me when he froze and he was wearing tight trousers so I could see very clearly what was going on around there. At precisely that moment, I told him I collected the autographs of great men and asked him if he would give me his signature on Palace notepaper. I got up and went to his desk myself and found the paper and told him where to sign. It was too easy. The wretched man hardly knew what he was doing. He signed and I put the paper in my purse and sat down again. You know, Oswald, you can make them do just about anything you want if you catch them right at the very moment when the powder first hits them. They're so astonished and embarrassed by the suddenness of it all they'll do absolutely anything. We're never going to have any trouble getting their signatures. Anyway, I was back again on the sofa now and Alfonso was standing there goggling at me and he kept swallowing which made his Adam's apple jump up and down. Red in the face he was, too, and then he started taking deep breaths. "Come and sit down, your Majesty," I said, patting the place beside me. He came and sat down. The swallowing and the goggling and the fidgeting went on for about a minute and I could see this absolutely terrific lech building up inside him as the powder got to work. It was like steam building up in a boiler with nowhere to escape except through the safety valve. And the saf
ety valve was little me. If he didn't get little me he was going to explode. Suddenly he said in a chokey and rather prim sort of voice, "I wish you to remove your clothes, madame."

  ' "Oh sire!" I cried, putting both hands on my breast. "What are you saying!"

  ' "Take them off," he said, gulping.

  ' "But then you will ravish me, your Majesty!" I cried.

  ' "Please don't keep me waiting," he said, gulping some more.

  ' "If you ravish me, sire, I will become pregnant and our mutual friend will know something has happened between us. He will be so angry he will send warships to bombard your cities."

  ' "You must tell him it was he who got you pregnant. Come along now, I cannot wait!"

  ' "He'll know it wasn't him, your Majesty, because he and I always take precautions."

  ' "Then take precautions now!" he snapped. "And please do not argue with me, madame!" '

  'You handled it beautifully,' I said to Yasmin. 'So you put the thing on him.'

  'No problem,' she said. 'It was easy. With Woresley I had had the most awful fight, but this time it was as easy as putting a tea-cosy on a teapot.'

  'Then what?'

  'They're pretty odd, these royals,' Yasmin said. 'They know a few tricks us ordinary mortals have never heard of.'

  'Such as what?'

  'Well,' she said, 'for one thing he doesn't move. I suppose the theory is that kings don't do any manual labour.'

  'So he made you do all the work.'

  'I wasn't allowed to move either.'

  'Now don't be silly, Yasmin. You can't have static copulation.'

  'Kings can,' she said. 'Wait till you hear this. You won't believe it. You simply won't believe this sort of thing could happen.'

  'What sort of thing?' I said.

  'I told you I had chosen a chaise longue covered in purple velvet,' Yasmin said.

  'Yes.'

  'Well, it turned out I'd picked exactly the right one. This damn sofa was some sort of a specially constructed royal romping ground. It was the most fantastic experience I've ever had. It had something underneath it, God knows what, but it was some sort of an engine and when the King pulled a lever the whole sofa began to joggle up and down.'

  'You're having me on.'

  'I am not having you on!' she cried. 'I couldn't make that up even if I wanted to and you jolly well know it.'