Perfect.

There were eleven of us, including me, in this particular group, and Sir Charles courteously introduced me to each one of them in turn. “This is young Oswald Cornelius,” he said. “His father was our man in Copenhagen. Meet the German ambassador, Oswald.” I met the German ambassador. Then I met the Italian ambassador and the Hungarian ambassador and the Russian ambassador and the Peruvian ambassador and the Mexican ambassador. Then I met the French minister for foreign affairs and a French army general and lastly a funny little dark man from Japan who was introduced simply as Mr. Mitsouko. Every one of them spoke English, and it seemed that out of courtesy to their host they were making it the language of the evening.

“Have a glass of port, young man,” Sir Charles Makepiece said to me, “and pass it round.” I poured myself some port and carefully passed the decanter to my left. “This is a good bottle. Fonseca’s eighty-seven. Your father tells me you’ve got a scholarship to Trinity. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. My moment was coming any second now. I must not miss it. I must plunge in.

“What’s your subject?” Sir Charles asked me.

“Science, sir,” I answered. Then I plunged. “As a matter of fact,” I said, lifting my voice just enough for them all to hear me, “there’s some absolutely amazing work being done in one of the laboratories up there at this moment. Highly secret. You simply wouldn’t believe what they’ve just discovered.”

Ten heads came up and ten pairs of eyes rose from port glasses and coffee cups and regarded me with mild interest.

“I didn’t know you’d already gone up,” Sir Charles said. “I thought you had a year to wait and that’s why you’re over here.”

“Quite right,” I said. “But my future tutor invited me to spend most of last term working in the Natural Sciences Lab. That’s my favourite subject, natural sciences.”

“And what, may I ask, have they just discovered that is so secret and so remarkable?” There was a touch of banter in Sir Charles’s voice now, and who could blame him?

“Well, sir,” I murmured, and then purposely, I stopped.

Silence for a few seconds. The nine foreigners and the British ambassador sat still, waiting politely for me to go on. They were regarding me with a mixture of tolerance and amusement. This young lad, they seemed to be saying, has a bit of a nerve to be holding forth like this in front of us. But let’s hear him out. It’s better than talking politics.

“Don’t tell me they are letting a fellow of your age handle secrets,” Sir Charles said, smiling a little with his crumbling terra-cotta face.

“These aren’t war secrets, sir,” I said. “They couldn’t help an enemy. These are secrets that are going to help all of mankind.”

“Then tell us about them,” Sir Charles said, lighting a huge cigar. “You have a distinguished audience here and they are all waiting to hear from you.”

“I think it’s the greatest scientific breakthrough since Pasteur,” I said. “It’s going to change the world.”

The foreign minister of France made a sharp whistling sound by sucking air up through his hairy nostrils. “You have another Pasteur in England at this moment?” he said. “If so, I would very much like to hear about him.” He was a sleek oily Frenchman, this foreign minister, and sharp as a knife. I would have to watch him.

“If the world is about to be changed,” Sir Charles said, “I’m a little surprised that this information hasn’t yet found its way to my desk.”

Steady on, Oswald, I told myself. You’ve hardly begun and already you’ve been laying it on too thick.

“Forgive me, sir, but the point is he hasn’t published yet.”

“Who hasn’t? Who’s he?”

“Professor Yousoupoff, sir.”

The Russian ambassador put down his glass of port and said, “Yousoupoff? Iss he a Russian?”

“Yes, sir, he’s a Russian.”

“Then vy haven’t I heard of him?”

I wasn’t about to get into a tangle with this black-eyed, black-bearded Cossack, so I kept silent.

“Come on, then, young man,” Sir Charles said. “Tell us about the greatest scientific breakthrough of our time. You mustn’t keep us in suspense, you know.”

I took a few deep breaths and a gulp of port. This was the great moment. Pray heaven I wouldn’t mess it up.

“For years,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff has been working on the theory that the seeds of a ripe pomegranate contain an ingredient that has powerful rejuvenative properties.”

“We have millions and millions of pomegranates in my country!” the Italian ambassador exclaimed, looking proud.

“Be quiet, Emilio,” Sir Charles said. “Let the boy go on.”

“For twenty-seven years,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff has been studying the seed of the pomegranate. It became an obsession with him. He used to sleep in the laboratory. He never went out socially. He never married. The whole place was littered with pomegranates and their seeds.”

“Excuse me, please,” said the little Japanese man. “But why the pomegranate? Why not the grape or the black currant?”

“I cannot answer that question, sir,” I said. “I suppose it was simply what you might call a hunch.”

“Hell of a long time to spend on a hunch,” Sir Charles said. “But go on, my boy. We mustn’t interrupt you.”

“Last January,” I said, “the Professor’s patience was at last rewarded. What he did was this. He dissected the seed of a pomegranate and examined the contents bit by bit under a powerful microscope. And it was only then that he observed in the very centre of the seed a minuscule speck of red vegetable tissue that he’d never seen before. He proceeded to isolate this tiny speck of tissue. But it was obviously too small to be of any use on its own. So the Professor set out to dissect one hundred seeds and to obtain from them one hundred of these tiny red particles. This is where he allowed me to assist him. I mean by dissecting out these particles under a microscope. This alone occupied us for a whole week.”

I took another sip of port. My audience waited for me to go on.

“So we now had one hundred red particles, but even when we put them all together on a glass slide, the result could still not be seen by the naked eye.”

“And you say they were red, these little things?” said the Hungarian ambassador.

“Under the microscope they were a brilliant scarlet,” I said.

“And what did this famous professor do with them?”

“He fed them to a rat,” I said.

“A rat!”

“Yes,” I said. “A big white rat.”

“Vy vould anybody vish to feed deese little red bornegranate tings to a rat?” the German ambassador asked.

“Give him a chance, Wolfgang,” Sir Charles said to the German. “Let him finish. I want to know what happened.” He nodded for me to go on.

“You see, sir,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff had in the laboratory a lot of white rats. He took the one hundred tiny red particles and fed every one of them to a single large healthy male rat. He did this by inserting them, under a microscope, into a piece of meat. He then put the rat in a cage together with ten female rats. I remember very clearly how the Professor and I stood beside the cage watching the male rat. It was late afternoon and we were so excited we had forgotten all about lunch.”

“Excuse me one moment, please,” the clever French foreign minister said. “But why were you so excited? What made you think that anything was going to happen with this rat?”

Here we go, I thought. I knew I’d have to watch this wily Frenchman. “I was excited, sir, simply because the Professor was excited,” I said. “He seemed to know something was going to happen. I can’t tell you how. Don’t forget, gentlemen, I was only a very young junior assistant. The Professor did not tell me all his secrets.”

“I see,” the foreign minister said. “Then let us proceed.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Well, we were watching the rat. At first, nothing happened. Then suddenly, after exactly nine minutes, the rat became very still. He crouched down, quivering all over. He was looking at the females. He crept toward the nearest one and grabbed her by the skin of her neck with his teeth and mounted her. It did not take long. He was very fierce with her and very swift. But here’s the extraordinary thing. The moment the rat had finished copulating with the first female, he grabbed a second one and set about her in just the same way. Then he took a third female rat, and a fourth, and a fifth. He was absolutely tireless. He went from one female to another, fornicating with each in turn until he had covered all ten of them. Even then, gentlemen, he hadn’t had enough!”