Heil Harris!

sort of secret agent.”
    “I’m a highwayman.” She sighed and decided she would have to be friendly. Stormtroopers can be unpleasant. “What are you?”
    “I’m a Jew.”
    As a joke it was in pretty poor taste, but it was that kind of party. “So why are you dressed as an S.S. man?”
    “Why are you dressed as a highwayman?”
    “I happened to be wearing this outfit when I arrived in Berniston this morning.” Rather becoming, the jacket in emerald green corduroy and the thigh boots in emerald green suedette, with the black gloves and hipster belt providing dramatic contrast. She had worn it for the hunt.
    “I’d rather be an S.S. man, but it takes more than a change of clothes to switch sides after two thousand years. Will you help me?”
    “I’m not a secret agent.” The music was dull. Bad Beatlemusic. The county people were catching up with out-of-date trends as usual and doing it badly. Among the revellers there was even a dentist dressed up as Batman, and as the drink flowed he became embarrassing in his hunt for a Robin. “I went to school with the daughter of the M.F.H. and I’m here for the weekend. Pm not a spy on the job.”
    It’s so much more fun, Synthia Throgmorton had said, now that the barriers have broken down. Rock and roll and all kinds of people one didn’t meet when the county families stuck together. Yes, David Simmons was a Jew and that fellow dressed as Peter Pan went to the local grammar school. Wasn’t it clever to do away with those awful hunt balls and have a fun party instead?
    “Of course Ralph’s a circuit judge now,” Bugs Bunny was saying, “so he couldn’t come tonight. I asked him to come as the public hangman. He was furious.”
    “He could always have come as a judge.”
    “All right,” said David Simmons, defeated, “if you won’t help me, perhaps you’ll dance with me?”
    “I’d love to.”
    The trouble with hunt balls is that there are too many people trying too hard to talk to the right people; too few attractive women, too few attractive men; too many people who’ve come to prove that they’ve bought their way in; too many people who are impressed by so much money. The trouble with hunt balls was that Emma didn’t enjoy them.
    “Who told you I’m a spy?” Emma asked.
    “Cynthia Throgmorton. She knows all kinds of people—”
    “I’ve heard about them. What sort of help were you wanting?”
    David Simmons was a thin, athletic type with eager, darting eyes. If he weren’t so worried he’d be very attractive. Middle twenties, a barrister by profession and radiating nervous energy. She took his hand and led him from the ballroom on to one of those verandas where people drink coffee, smoke cigars and eat After Eights. It was a warm, romantic evening. She sat David Simmons in a wrought iron chair and told him to relax.
    “I’m sorry to be melodramatic,” he said after lighting a cigarette with sharp, jerky movements. “It must be all those people in disguise. For the past few hours I’ve felt myself absolutely surrounded by hostile faces. An atmosphere of menace—”
    “Have you tried a stiff brandy? I know lots of those people, and more law-abiding creatures you couldn’t imagine. They can’t even kill a small fox unless there are twenty-five of them.” She laughed reassuringly. “And don’t be taken in by the noise — it’s making them nervous as well.”
    “It’s like the 1930s all over again,” said David Simmons. “The swastikas and the stigma—”
    “You weren’t alive in 1930.” She waved to a footman and took two drinks, a Campari and a stiff brandy. It had come to something when she was mothering a young man of approximately her own age and being forced into the role of a spy. She felt almost pompous. Well, yes, she had given Steed a bit of help when he’d needed it, she’d thrown a few characters over her graceful shoulders and come pretty close to a grisly death, but to be asked to a fancy dress ball as Emma Peel the well-known spy.... I’m a woman of 28 with auburn hair, green eyes and a figure like a fashion model: slightly slimmer than the Venus de Milo but done in a nicer pink. I’m beautiful. “I don’t like fancy dress balls myself,” she reflected. “They’re so unnecessary.”
    “They help to create an atmosphere of unreality,” he muttered. “You need such an atmosphere for burning human torches, for rape or racial warfare. You can call yourself a Werewolf and all things become