And the pain! And I howled! And I howled and I howled and I wept. And I begged too, I will tell you.

‘Stop,’ I begged and I wept as I begged. ‘Please stop. Oh my God, that hurts, pull it out, please pull it out.’

But he ground it around before he slowly pulled it out.

‘Unemployed,’ said the fellow, as he wiped my blood from his biro onto my leg, then shook his head and tutted.

And I shook from top to toe, and then I peed myself.

The fellow asked me many things on that terrible afternoon and I must have told him many things, although most of them were probably gibberish, because I would have told him anything at all in order that he stop inflicting pain upon me.

But he did not stop and the things that he did to me got worse and worse and worse.

And then it became apparent to me that I was not going to leave this awful room alive. I was going to die there in agony. That was all that was left for me.

And I do recall the electrical apparatus. The electrodes that he pressed to my person. And then the flash and the horrible explosion.

And that was that for me.

‘And now awake!’

And I awoke, in terror and confusion.

‘And get stuck into your breakfast, or I will be forced to relieve you of at least one of those splendid pork sausages.’

And I did awakenings and focusings of the eyes and then I made free with a very startled squawk and fainted dead away.

To be awoken once more, by the application of a smelling-bottle to my nasal parts. Which caused more squawkings from my oral parts and cries to desist and leave off.

‘Aha, young Rizla. You are with us once more.’

And I beheld and lo it was Hugo Rune.

And I did great blinkings of the eyes and gaggings of the mouth as I gazed all around and about and recognised my surroundings. I was surely once more in the rooms that we had inhabited together during the year of my adventures with him. The rooms at 49 Grand Parade, Brighton.

‘Oh,’ I went. And, ‘Bless my soul.’ And, ‘Thank the Lord.’ And things of that nature generally.

And then a terrible thought struck me and I ceased with such joyous ejaculations and became all downcast and glum.

‘What ails you, young Rizla?’ asked Mr Rune. ‘I have delivered you from your tormentor and awoken you to a hero’s breakfast. Why the long face and deeply furrowed brow?’

‘Because it is all a falsehood,’ I declared and I glared as I declared this. ‘The contents of this room were destroyed in a fire last year. This is some kind of evil trick. The mind-altering chemicals, is that the game?’

But Mr Rune munched toast. He reached forwards and dunked his toast into the fried egg on my plate and then he munched some more.

And then he said, ‘Mind-altering chemicals, did I hear you say?’

And I said, yes, he had. And that this was all a fake and that I was not going to fall for it, not at all, no. And to add weight to my words I shook my head. Which hurt quite a bit, because I seemed to have something of a headache.

But Hugo Rune just smiled upon me. And then he helped himself to one of my sausages.

‘Leave that alone,’ I told him. And I reached out and snatched it back.

‘You will find it preferable to Bratwurst, I’m thinking,’ said the guru’s guru, and he winked at me.

I took breaths of the deepest kind and tried to steady my crumpled-up mind. And I looked all around and about and all looked real to me.

I sat at the breakfasting table at which Mr Rune and I had taken many a breakfast. Our chairs were of the Victorian persuasion, as were indeed the greater part of the furnishings within this wonderful room. Upon mahogany shelves the leather spines of Mr Rune’s vast collection of thaumaturgical books glowed with a rich patina. As indeed did everything, it seemed. The cases of stuffed creatures, many, I recalled, of an apparently mythical nature. The polished brass of the intricate machines, whose purposes I had never fathomed. The curiosities that Mr Rune had gathered during his world travellings. The magical items that were the gifts from grateful monarchs and society figures for whom Mr Rune had rendered certain discreet services.

All was as I remembered it.

But all, I knew, had been destroyed by fire.

‘It is somehow fake,’ I said and I popped the sausage into my mouth and chewed with vigour upon it. ‘I do not know how it has been done, or why it has been done. But neither at this moment do I care.’ And then I forked up bacon and conveyed it speedily into my mouth.

‘Would you care for coffee?’ asked Hugo Rune. ‘It is ersatz, of course, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?’

I shrugged my shoulders and got stuck into my breakfast.

‘I’ll wager you’d care for an explanation,’ said Hugo Rune. But I just shrugged once more and stuck further into the sticking in.

But I viewed him over my breakfasting fork and took in his striking presence. It was him, of this there could be no doubt. This was Hugo Rune, the real Hugo Rune. No substitute could ever there be. Tall and imposing, even when seated. The heavy brows and shaven head, with its pentagram tattoo. The quilted velvet smoking jacket, the high-collared shirt with cravat.

And those eyes. Those mischievous twinkling eyes. That held such wisdom. Held such power.

Then Hugo Rune poured coffee from a proper coffee pot.

‘It is you,’ said I, between sweet mastications. ‘It is you and this is the room that we shared. But how?’

Smiling, Hugo Rune raised his coffee cup as if in toast to me. ‘The contents of the room you know and recognise, young Rizla. But we are not in Brighton, we are in Brentford, in my home on the famous Butts Estate.’

I did groanings of the voice at this, and shudderings of the shoulders. ‘Then my joy at our reunion, for joy indeed it is, will be brief,’ I said, ‘for I am a wanted man.’

‘Wanted by the Gestapo?’ said Himself.

And I nodded in response and said that regrettably this was so. And I took the opportunity to now do the right thing and to thank Mr Rune for saving me from the merciless hands of my tormentor. I rubbed at my wounded parts and found to my surprise that they appeared no longer wounded.

So I thanked Mr Rune for this also. As I had no doubt in my mind that it was he who had healed me.

‘My pleasure,’ he said, and he drained his coffee cup.

‘And I will tell you this,’ I said, taking up my coffee cup and tossing coffee down my throat. ‘That-Wahh!’ And I spat coffee the full length of the table.

‘Oh sorry, sorry,’ I went, ‘but what was that?’

Gagging, I clutched at my throat and I pointed with my free hand to the coffee pot.

‘Ersatz coffee,’ said Mr Rune, dabbing flecks of same from his velvet lapels. ‘I did warn you. After all, there is a war on, you know.’

‘A war?’ I said. And hope, as Bing Crosby might say, sprang eternal. ‘So the plain people of Brentford are fighting back against the mind-altering neo-Nazis?’

‘Not as such.’ Mr Rune did shakings of his proud and noble head. ‘It will be necessary for me to explain matters to you, Rizla-’

At this I opened my mouth to offer my real name. But then I thought much better of it and so did not. If Mr Rune chose to call me Rizla, then that was the name I would happily go by in his company. Being myself and going by my real name had not proved of late to be a particularly viable proposition.

‘To explain matters,’ said Mr Rune once more, ‘things have become somewhat complicated. Therefore I wish to call again upon your services to aid me in expediting matters. If not speedily, then at least with a view to ultimate success.’ Hugo Rune smiled once more upon me.

‘An explanation would be nice at this time,’ I told him. ‘But please let me thank you once more for saving my life. Also let me say that I should away from these premises with alacrity – I am after all a most wanted man and I would not want you to suffer on my behalf.’