Heil Harris!

think I’ll bother. I’d rather go back to the Sea Rangers.”
    The twenty members watched with sullen hostility while she walked between them to the door. Nobody stopped her, so she had to go on downstairs to the bar. She ordered a Campari. Fifteen minutes later the Werewolves came downstairs and continued with the social part of the evening.
    “Mrs. Peel?” It was a man of about fifty who had been at the meeting. Greying temples and a smile that he had learnt from watching Cary Grant. “I’m Colonel Hayburn.” He flicked his fingers authoritatively at the barman and ordered a double whisky. “I enjoyed the game you were playing upstairs. You won hands down, and I admire a girl who can win with style. But of course you did leave the initiative to continue the game With us. Let’s drink to a more fruitful acquaintance.” Emma raised her glass and looked suitably charmed. “We can answer the questions you were asking, because we have immense riches behind our organisation. Several million pounds. And we have a figurehead who will be perfectly capable of leading the whole country. But you must forgive me if I say no more on those subjects at this point.”
    Colonel Hayburn leaned across the bar and took the Campari bottle from the shelf, called to “Charlie” for the rest of the whisky, and then he took Emma’s arm. “Let’s find ourselves a corner where we can get to know each other. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since I heard about the way you punished Picton-Murbless-Gore. I like a girl with spirit.”
    She sat with him in a corner and let him ply the drinks. Hayburn was a ladies’ man who worked on the theory that he could out-drink any woman on earth. They spent sixty minutes testing that one.
    “You were defending Simmons, I gather.” He chuckled indulgently. “He’s an attractive lad, I suppose. Did you enjoy cutting him down from the chandelier?” Emma was tapping her foot to the music for several minutes before she realised with surprise that there was a juke box in this olde horse brass inn. “I didn’t realise what was going on,” she explained. “Cynthia told me about the Werewolves later that night.”
    Hayburn laughed, gently, crinkling up his eyes so that it didn’t seem as if he was looking at her. “We have a few ceremonies like that, to sort out the wolves from the sheep. Ha ha. We have to, being an illegal organisation, make our members break the law. Then we have a hold over them, and they have to make an effort. It’s all rather childish, I suppose, but quite enjoyable if you approach it in the right spirit. After all, politics is rather childish. We make our members burn down the door of a synagogue, rape a negress or publicly humiliate a Jew. Harmless, but illegal. Like the christening ceremonies when you go to a new school.”
    “Well, who wants to grow up anyway?” She knocked back her drink and matched his third whisky. “Cheers.” Perhaps he expected something more from her in the way of response. “You have to devise entertainments for your members, don’t you?”
    “The secret of government, my dear. You’ve hit upon it. Sometimes the changing of the guard and the Lord Mayor’s Show is enough, and sometimes it takes a gloriously nasty war to entertain the people. Human nature, they call it. I keep my members happy with petty violence and acts of terrorism, and that way we can move forward. But I admired your perception in seeing that more is required to actually assume the reins of power. We shall need a Hitler Youth movement and an atmosphere of violence to maintain our support, and we’ll need several million Jews or negroes who will be fair game for brutality. Perhaps even a few concentration camps for a while, to amuse our disrupted country. These are sops to the sadism of the people, and when we give them outlets for their sadism they will give us power.” He chuckled knowingly. “Politics is not a game for idealists, is it?”
    Emma wondered. She had never liked Mr. Wilson or Harold Macmillan very much, but perhaps they were men with restraint after all. “Aren’t you sailing a little close to the decline and fall of the Roman empire?”
    “I am not a homosexual!” Said with such emphasis that the whisky must be taking effect. “How do you feel about communists?” he asked eventually.
    “I can take them or leave them. I once knew a director of Unity Theatre and he bored me to death with his single-mindedness. But then a lot