Think of England

by K.J. Charles

equipped with the very latest innovations, with running water in all the bathrooms, heated by hot-water radiators and illuminated throughout by electricity from his own hydroelectric generator. These luxuries were becoming quite familiar in London hotels, but to find them in such measure in a private house so far from the centre of things was still a surprise.

and bore no great signs of intelligence.

“I, er,” said Curtis, with the natural awkwardness of an Englishman caught reading poetry.

“Then lie back and think of England.”

Nemo me impune lacessit. If you cross me, you’ll regret it.

“Well, God knows what you used to be, then, because you’re built like a brick shithouse and hung like a horse.”

“You’re a secret agent?” “I loathe that term. It’s so violent, somehow.” “You?” Da Silva rolled his eyes. “I suppose I should find your incredulity flattering. It would be lowering to learn I looked like a tool of the State.” “But— Why didn’t you say?” “Secret agent. Secret.”

“Dear fellow, you’ve missed it by a mile.” Da Silva patted his arm comfortingly. “I’m a government agent and a shameless invert.

If he had been asked to describe his battle rage, he would not have called it “Berserker spirit”. The phrase, he felt, was “homicidal mania”.

The question isn’t if you’re a fellow who cries in the night before a big engagement—and I knew a damned brave man who did exactly that, regularly. It’s whether you pick yourself up the next day.”

They’re just like you.” Daniel cocked a wary, questioning eyebrow. “Incomprehensible,” Curtis told him, “and far too clever for their own good, and hiding all sorts of things, and—rather beautiful.”

“The devil. I call myself a pacifist. That was wholesale slaughter.”