‘You couldn’t see your way clear to sparing us three ’a’pence for a pint of porter, could you, your Lordship? I’ve been bombed out of me ’ouse and ’ome an’ ’ave naught but the rags I stand up in.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but I am a bit like Twiggy at present – flat busted.’ And then I realised that I had made a joke, if naught but a feeble one. And certainly a feeble one that would have meant absolutely nothing to a fellow in nineteen forty-four. ‘I have no cash,’ I explained. In order to put the matter clearly.

‘A puff on your posh cigarette, then?’

‘Gladly so.’ And I parted with my Capstan.

The fellow snatched it to his mouth and took great drags upon it.

‘So you were bombed out,’ I said to him. ‘Where are you living now?’

‘Right ’ere,’ he said in return. ‘Right ’ere on the top of this ’ere tram.’

‘And the tram company allows this?’

‘I won’t tell ’em if you don’t.’ And he winked a bleary eye at me.

‘Right.’ I watched him as he smoked my cigarette. And I wondered who he was. And, oddly, when he would die. He looked rather old and ill, which probably meant that he would not last until nineteen sixty-seven. So I would not be able to go and look him up, should I be lucky enough to return intact to that time. So in a way it was as if his days were numbered. And I somehow was doing the numbering.

‘That’s a queer thing you’re musing upon, guv’nor,’ said he, between great breathings-in of my Capstan Full Strength. ‘When or when not a man’s time it is to die is between that man and the God what made ’im, so it is.’

‘Oh,’ I said. And I was shocked by this. ‘Did you just read my thoughts? I do not understand.’

The fellow tapped at his shabby nose with an even shabbier finger. And then he beckoned me with it and I leaned over the belly of Mr Rune to hear what this wretch had to say.

‘Step very carefully, young Rizla,’ he whispered into my ear. And I felt his warm breath on me and smelled that breath as well. ‘Much depends upon you. And there are those who will seek to destroy you. You must take care, young Rizla, you really must. And when you see that number twenty-seven, don’t think, just run.’

‘But how?’ I said in much wonder and confusion. ‘And what do you mean? And who are you?’

‘You may know me as Diogenes. Now take care.’

And he handed me back what remained of my cigarette and he tipped his cap to me. And I straightened up in my seat and then I went suddenly, ‘Wahh!’

And I jumped considerably and Hugo Rune laughed.

‘What?’ I went. And, ‘Where?’ And, ‘Ow!’ And I looked down at the fingers of my right hand, which hurt. Considerably.

‘You nodded off,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘with a lit cigarette between your fingers. You must take care, young Rizla. You really must.’

I opened my mouth, but had nothing to say.

And so I closed it again.

We disembarked from the tram at Mornington Crescent.

And approached the Underground station.

I was feeling a tad wobbly about the knees of me. Something odd had happened on that tram and although ‘odd’ was the currency in which Mr Rune dealt, it still had the ability to throw me off my balance and out of my kilter.

What had I experienced upon that top deck? A dream, a vision? Had I actually met Mr Diogenes? Had he imparted important information to me? The business regarding the number twenty-seven and the running that must be done upon the seeing of this number? I was dazed and roundly confused and this clearly showed on my face.

‘Perk up, young Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘A treat awaits you within.’ And he gestured with his stick towards the entrance to the Underground. ‘We are going below.’

‘I have travelled on the Tube before,’ I said. ‘I will find little of the treat in that.’

‘We are not going a-travelling. We have arrived. At the Ministry of Serendipity.’

Now Mr Rune had spoken to me before of this mysterious Ministry and there had been at least two cases in The Brightonomicon in which their involvement had been apparent. What knowledge regarding this Ministry that I had gleaned from Hugo Rune was that it was ‘the power behind many thrones’. That ‘those who control the controllers of our nation’ were to be found within. Precisely what Mr Rune’s relationship with this literally underground organisation was, I had not been told. And so I asked to be now.

‘They are presently covering my expenses,’ was the reply. And Mr Rune tapped his stout stick on the pavement. ‘They require my skills and knowledge. I am engaged, as it were, in furthering the War Effort.’

‘We are clearly here because of the phone call you received,’ I said. ‘The tarot card I picked is therefore surely irrelevant.’

Mr Rune composed his eyebrows into a Gothic arch. ‘Shame on you, Rizla,’ he said. ‘The Ministry might pay my bills, but I work for a greater good. I will say this to you. It is the Ministry of Serendipity that controls the waging of the war against Germany. When Mr McMurdo sneezes, Winston Churchill offers his handkerchief. But Rune is immune to such snifflings. Rune is above and beyond. Now pacy-pacy and follow me. The squamulose square-rigger squats not for squaw-man, squash nor squirrel-fish. Especially not for the latter!’

‘There is no doubting that,’ I said and I followed Mr Rune.

We passed by the ticket window and entered the lift.

It was a Magnathy and Pericule front-lattice cage-lift, with brass quadroon-filibasters and wibbly-wobbly faybill tremblers. Rather posh by anyone’s standards.

Mr Rune did not press a floor button; rather he fished into his tweedy waistcoat and drew out a key that was affixed to his watch fob by a golden chain. He flipped aside one of the floor buttons, inserted the key and gave it a little twist.

‘Hold on tightly,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘Hold on tightly? Why?’

But that was altogether a foolish question upon my part, as the lift now gathered speed and plunged in the downwards direction.

I went, ‘Ooooh!’ as my ears went ‘pop’ and my bladder nearly went ‘wee’. And down and down and down we went.

And down and down some more.

Although greatly afeared and clinging desperately to a curlicue stanchion double-racked handrail, I watched Mr Rune as we descended at break-your-neck speed surely down into the very bowels of the Earth. The guru’s guru stood at the centre of the plummeting lift, his brogued feet four-square upon the floor, his stout stick going tap-tap-tap. And a great big smile on his face.

And then the lift just suddenly stopped.

And I all but sank in anguish to my knees.

And Hugo Rune said, ‘Didn’t you just love that bit?’

And I said, ‘No, I did not.’

Hugo Rune flung the lift doors open and we found ourselves in what looked for all the wide world to me to be the entrance hall of a stately home.

It was richly floored in the Churrigueresque fashion, but with sufficient renderings of Chuvash chyle-coloured chryoprase as to engender surprise. The ceiling was arched in that style known as Orphean-retro, so appropriate to the atmosphere of this chthonian scene. Framed portraits, framed I should add after the manner of Dalbatto, hung the length of this hall, each illuminated by an electric torchère.

I paused to admire an Annibale Carracci.

But Mr Rune urged me on. ‘Not one of his finest canvasses,’ he said, sniffily. ‘I feel that his best work is to be found in the stateroom of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.’

‘I’m sure you are right,’ I said. ‘But then I would not know a José de Churriguera from a Constantin Meunier.’

Mr Rune raised his stout stick to me. But he heartily grinned as he did so. ‘Ah,’ said he. ‘We are here at last.’ And he rapped on a big brass door.

For big and brassy was this door, from its top to its very bottom, and well buffed and polished and burnished as gold with many a brazen rivet.