Heil Harris!

present from Albert when he came back from Paris, called something like Sueur du Desir. I don’t think I like it. It’s based on the idea that violets are artificial whereas the human body is naturally attractive.” She lay back on the pillow and thought for a moment. “Like animals, I suppose. But it didn’t work on Freddie. He couldn’t smell anything for the whisky fumes.”
    “Can women join the Werewolves?”
    “Oh God, darling, you don’t need to prove your virility, do you?”
    “I might agree with their principles.”
    Cynthia looked at her and then closed her eyes. “I don’t think there are any principles. They just daub swastikas on synagogues and break up communist party meetings and have fights with people. They do brave things like play Russian roulette.” She sat up suddenly and removed her blue slip, then she wriggled about until she had taken off her stockings and roll-on. “Oh yes, you have to believe in Hitler. Things like that. Jewish bankers.”
    She yawned and closed her eyes again.
    “Did you enjoy finishing school?”
    “Not much.”
    “I suppose not. You were too sophisticated. You never had spots or surplus fat. And you over-awed all those young officers. Those Italian kids from the village. How does it feel to be twenty-eight?”
    Emma grinned in the dim light. “Much the same. Are you falling asleep?”
    “Freddie wore me out.”
    “Let’s go to the next meeting of the Werewolves. It might be fun.”
    “It’s the day after tomorrow. Good night.”
    Emma moved away to the side Q£ the bed. “Good night.”
     
    “The Werewolves are an underground organization doing something about problems that can only be dealt with illegally in a democracy. Everybody knows that Britain is being swamped by the coloured people, that the Jews have too much power, and that socialism has eaten away our moral fibre. But we can’t legally do anything to stop the rot.”
    They were sitting in the club room of the Old Bam, an historic pub that had been built when Wiltshire became the capital of the New Yorker’s England in i960. It sold excellent beer, and every avid listener sat with the traditional foaming pint before him. Beer and politics was a splendid recipe that had been neglected of late. Which seemed a shame. Alcohol was certainly adding fervour to the main speech.
    “We shall not bother with winning votes or appealing to the press for a fair hearing. We shall fight a guerilla war to destroy the British system of government. Not by marching fifty miles every Easter nor by sitting down in Trafalgar Square. We’ll do it the way the Jews did it in Palestine, by secret terror. Within six months we’ll reduce the country to panic and chaos.”
    Freddie Flamborough was a fluent speaker, and he made up for a lack of depth by his intensity. His austere captain’s uniform added an extra dimension of menace. Emma felt that the beer halls of Bavaria must have been something like this in the 1920s, equally easy to dismiss as neurotic, but in that instance highly dangerous. She looked about at Freddie’s listeners. At Cynthia, who wasn’t listening. At the sprinkling of pasty faced private soldiers, half a dozen officers, and the well-bred sons of a bygone ruling class. If the thing had any serious motivation, Emma decided, it was probably something to do with power having now passed to a different section of the community. So the officers and gentlemen were setting up a rearguard action.
    “Any questions?” demanded Freddie, leaning glassily across the table.
    “Yes.” It was Emma Peel. “Given that you reduce the country to a state of chaos, how do you propose to take over and run the administration?”
    “The way that conquerors have always taken over.Any more?”
    “Yes.” It was Emma Peel. “What’s your own political philosophy?”
    “I don’t think you can have been listening.”
    Emma stood up and sauntered across to the table. “I was listening. I’ve heard people talk before. Now try to impress me.” She sat on the edge of the table and waited.
    Freddie stared at her for a moment of toad-like incredulity and then emptied his pint of bitter. “I saw you at the Throgmorton party the other night with David Simmons. What are you doing here?”
    “Darling,” called a submissive Cynthia from the back, “I brought Emma with me. I’ve known her since we—”
    “You haven’t been inducted?”
    “No.” Emma smiled radiantly. “And on this evidence I don’t