Anyway, this duchess and I had been jouncing for an hour or so in the bathtub, and now that she had had enough she threw the soap at my face and stepped out of the water. The large slimy missile caught me on the mouth but as none of my teeth were dislodged or even loosened I ignored the incident. In point of fact, she had done it simply to quieten me down and to give her a chance to get away, which it did.

“Come back in,” I said, wanting a second helping.

“I’ve got to go,” she answered. She was keeping her distance as she dried her trim little body with one of my huge towels.

“It’s only half-time,” I pleaded.

“The trouble with you, Oswald, is you don’t know when to stop,” she said. “One day someone’s going to lose patience with you.”

“Frigid bitch,” I said. It was a silly thing to say and quite untrue, but I said it.

She went into the next room to get dressed. I remained sitting in the bath, silent and feeling thwarted. I didn’t like it when others called the tune.

“Good-bye, darling,” she said, coming back into the bathroom. She was wearing a short-sleeved silk dress, dark green.

“Go home, then,” I said. “Go back to your ridiculous duke.”

“Don’t be so grumpy,” she said. She walked over to me and bent down and began to massage my back under the water. Then her hand slid around to other areas, caressing and teasing gently. I sat still, enjoying it all and wondering whether she wasn’t perhaps going to start melting all over again.

Now you won’t believe this, but all the time the little vixen was pretending to play around with me, what she was actually doing was surreptitiously and with consummate stealth removing the plug from the plughole in the bottom of the bathtub. As you know, when the plug is withdrawn from a bath that is brimful of water, the suction down the plughole is immensely powerful. And when a man is sitting astride that plughole as I was at that moment, then it is inevitable that the two most tender and valuable objects in his possession are going to be sucked very suddenly into that dreadful hole. There was a dull plop as my scrotum took the full force of the suction and flew into the neck of the hole. I let out a scream that must have been heard clear across Kensington Square.

“Good-bye, darling,” said the duchess, sweeping out of the bathroom.

In the excruciating moments that followed I learned exactly what it must feel like to. fall into the hands of those Bedouin women who delight in depriving a traveller of his masculinity with blunt knives. “Help!”! screamed. “Save me!” I was impaled. I was glued to the tub. I was clutched in the claws of a mighty crab.

It seemed like hours but I don’t suppose I was actually stuck in that position for more than ten or fifteen minutes. It was quite long enough though. I don’t even know how I eventually managed to prize myself free all in one piece. But the damage was done. Powerful suction is a terrible thing and those two precious jewels of mine, which were normally no bigger than a couple of greengages, had suddenly assumed the size of cantaloupe melons. I think it was old Geoffrey Chaucer way back in the fourteenth century who wrote

and those immortal words, believe me, are now engraved upon my heart. For three days I was on crutches and for God knows how long after that I walked about like a man who was harbouring a porcupine between his thighs.

It was in this crippled condition that I made my way up to Cambridge on May 15th to keep my appointment with Yasmin at Dunroamin. As I got out of the car and hobbled toward the front door, my marbles were still on fire and throbbing like the devil’s drum. Yasmin, of course, would be wanting to know what had happened to me. So would Woresley. Should I tell them the truth? If I did, Yasmin would fall all over the room laughing, and I could already hear Woresley in his silly pompous way saying, “You are altogether too carnal, my dear Cornelius. No man can debauch himself the way you do without paying a heavy price.” I didn’t think I could stand that sort of thing right then, so I decided to tell them I had strained a ligament in my thigh. I had done it while helping an old lady after she had stumbled and taken a heavy fall on the pavement outside my house. I had carried her indoors and looked after her until the ambulance came, but it had all been a bit too much for me, etc., etc. That would do it.

I stood under the little porch outside the front door of Dunroamin and fished for my key. As I was doing this, I noticed there was an envelope pinned to the door. Someone had fixed it on firmly with a drawing-pin. Damn silly thing to do. I couldn’t get the pin out so I ripped the envelope away. There was no name on it so I opened it. Foolish not to put a name on the envelope. Was it for me? Yes, it was.

A real snorter, that. Right below the belt. It had me gasping.

I roared round the house in a wild fury. My stomach was boiling and I’m sure steam was spurting out of my nostrils. Had there been a dog in the place I’d have kicked it to death. I kicked the furniture instead. I smashed a lot of nice big things and then I set about picking up all the smaller objects, including a Baccarat paperweight and an Etruscan bowl, and flinging them through the windows, yelling bloody murder and watching the window-panes shatter.

But after an hour or so, I began to simmer down, and finally I collapsed into an armchair with a large glass of malt whiskey in my hand.

I am, as you may have gathered, a fairly resilient fellow. I explode when provoked, but I never brood about it afterwards. I scrub it out. There’s always another day. What’s more, nothing stimulates my mind so much as a whopping disaster. In the aftermath, in that period of deadly calm and absolute silence that follows the tempest, my brain becomes exceedingly active. As I sat drinking my whiskey during that terrible evening amidst the ruins of Dunroamin, I was already beginning to ponder and plan my future all over again.

So that’s that, I told myself. I’ve been diddled. It’s all over. Need a new start. I still have Proust and in years to come I shall do well with those fifty straws (and don’t think I didn’t), but that isn’t going to make me a millionaire. So what next?

It was at this point that the great and wonderful answer began trickling into my head. I sat quite still, allowing the idea to take root and grow. It was inspired. It was beautiful in its simplicity. It couldn’t fail. It would make me millions. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?