‘Thank you — and what are you?’

‘Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We’re all flowers of mud — FLEURS — HIC! DU MAL! It’s perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing Hell — harrowing the Pompadour — HIC!’

‘Go on — go on,’ said Maxim. ‘What comes next? It’s really very interesting.’

‘I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,’ said the Pussum.

‘Yes — yes, so do I,’ said the Russian. ‘He is a megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man — go on reading.’

‘Surely,’ Halliday intoned,