deserves to be
swindled. Still it won't be nice to have to listen to him."

"Bah!" said Madame, "we shall have the cash."

"And it was not I," said the king, "who said that the Duke of Wellington
wore the Pink Vulture. It was not Corinne. It was not you, Gorman, It
was the newspapers. When Bilkins come to us we say 'Bah! Go to _The
Times_, Sir Bilkins, go to _The Daily Mail_.' There is no more for
Bilkins to say then."

"One comfort," said Gorman, "is that he can't take a legal action of any
kind."

Their fears were, as it turned out, unfounded. Bilkins, having paid, not
L5,000 but L6,000, for the Megalian Order, was not anxious to advertise
the fact that he had made a bad bargain. Indeed he may be said to have
got good value for his money. He has not many opportunities of wearing
the ribbon and the star; but he describes himself on his visiting cards
and at the head of his business note paper as "Sir Timothy Bilkins,
K.C.O.P.V.M." Nobody knows what the letters stand for, and it is
generally believed that Bilkins has been knighted in the regular way for
services rendered to the country during the war. The few who remember
his deal in eggs are forced to suppose that the stories told about that
business at the time were slander. Lady Bilkins, who was present at
the ceremony of in-vesture, often talks of the "dear King and Queen of
Megalia." Madame Ypsilante can, when she chooses, look quite like a real
queen.

X. THE EMERALD PENDANT

Even as a schoolboy, Bland-Potterton was fussy and self-important At the
university--Balliol was his college--he was regarded as a coming man,
likely to make his mark in the world. This made him more fussy and more
self-important. When he became a recognised authority on Near Eastern
affairs he became pompous and more fussy than ever. His knighthood,
granted in 1918, and an inevitable increase in waist measurement
emphasised his pompousness without diminishing his fussiness. When
the craze for creating new departments of state was at its height,
Bland-Potterton, then Sir Bartholomew, was made Head of the Ministry for
Balkan Affairs. It was generally felt that the right man had been put
into the right place. Sir Bartholomew looked like a Minister, talked
like a Minister, and, what is more important, felt like a Minister.
Indeed he felt like a Cabinet Minister, though he had not yet obtained
that rank. Sir Bartholomew's return from Bournmania was duly advertised
in the newspapers