'You'll have a lot of valuable sperm on your hands and that's all,' I said. 'Leave it to us.'
14
The stage was set. Yasmin and I packed our bags and left for Madrid. We had with us the vital liquid nitrogen suitcase, the smaller case containing glycerol, etc., a supply of Prestat's best chocolate truffles and four ounces of Blister Beetle powder. I must again mention that in those days the examination of luggage by customs was virtually non-existent. There would be no trouble with our curious suitcases. We crossed the Channel and travelled to Madrid via Paris by Wagon-Lits. The trip took only nineteen hours altogether. In Madrid, we registered at the Ritz where we had booked separate rooms by telegram, one for Oswald Cornelius Esquire and one for Lady Victoria Nottingham.
The next morning I went to the Oriente Palace, where I was stopped at the gates by a couple of soldiers on guard duty. Waving my envelope and shouting, 'This is for the King!' in Spanish, I reached the big main entrance. I pulled the bell-knob. A flunkey opened one of the doors. I then spoke a Spanish sentence that I had committed to memory, which said, 'This is for His Majesty Alfonso from King George of Great Britain. It is most urgent.' I walked away.
Back at the hotel, I settled down with a book in Yasmin's room to await developments.
'What if he's out of town?' she said.
'He isn't,' I said. 'The flag was flying over the Palace.'
'What if he doesn't answer?'
'He'll answer. He wouldn't dare not to, after reading that letter on that notepaper.'
'But can he read English?'
'All kings can read English,' I said. 'It's a part of their education. Alfonso speaks perfect English.'
Just before lunchtime, there was a knock on the door. Yasmin opened it and there stood the manager of the hotel himself with a look of importance on his face. He had a silver tray in his hand on which lay a white envelope. 'An urgent message, my lady,' he said, bowing. Yasmin took the envelope, thanked him and closed the door.
'Rip it open!' I said.
She ripped it open and took out a letter handwritten on magnificent Palace notepaper.
My Dear Lady Victoria, it said. We shall be pleased to see you at four o'clock this afternoon. If you will give your name at the gates you will be admitted immediately.
Alfonso R
'Simple, isn't it?' I said.
'What does he mean we?'
'All monarchs refer to themselves as we. You have three hours to get ready and be at the Palace gates,' I said. 'Let's fix the chocolate.'
I had obtained from Prestat a number of very small and elegant boxes, each holding no more than six truffles. Yasmin was to give one box to the King as a small present. She was to say to him, 'I have brought you, sire, a little present of chocolates. They're delicious. George has them specially made for me.' She was then to open the box and say with a most disarming smile, 'Do you mind if I steal one? I simply can't resist them.' She pops one into her mouth, then picks up the marked chocolate and holds it out to the King delicately between forefinger and thumb, saying, 'Try one.' The poor man will be charmed. He will eat the choc just as A. R. Woresley did in the lab. And that will be that. Thereafter, Yasmin will simply have to carry on nine minutes of flirtatious small talk without getting entangled in any complicated reason for her visit.
I got out the Blister Beetle powder and we prepared the fa
tal truffle. 'No double doses this time,' Yasmin said. 'I don't want to have to use the hatpin.' I agreed. She herself marked the truffle with small scratches on the surface of the chocolate.
It was June and very hot in Madrid. Yasmin dressed with great care but wore the lightest possible clothes. I gave her a rubbery thing from my large stock and she put it in her purse.
'For God's sake don't fail to get it on him,' I said. 'That's what it's all about. And hurry back here with it quickly afterwards. Come straight to my room next door.' I wished her good luck and off she went.
In my own room I made careful preparations for dealing with the sperm as soon as it arrived. This was my very first time under actual field conditions and I wanted to get everything just right. I will admit I felt nervous. Yasmin was at the Palace. She was giving Blister Beetle to the King of Spain and after that there would be a good old wrestling match and I only hoped she would handle things properly.
The time went slowly. I finished my preparations. I leaned out of the window and watched the carriages in the street below. Once or twice a motor car came by, but there were not so many here as in London. I looked at my watch. It was after six o'clock. I made myself a whiskey and soda. I carried it to the open window and sipped it there. I was hoping to see Yasmin stepping out of a carriage at the hotel entrance. I didn't see her. I got myself a second whiskey. I sat down and tried to read a book. It was now six-thirty. She had been gone two and a half hours. Suddenly there was a loud knocking on my door. I got up and opened it. Yasmin, with cheeks afire, swept into the room.
'I did it!' she cried, waving her handbag at me like a flag. 'I've got it! It's in here!'
'Give it to me quick,' I said.
There was at least three ccs of royal semen in the knotted rubbery thing Yasmin handed to me. I put a drop under the microscope to test it for potency. The tiny royal squigglers were squiggling madly all over the place, supremely active. 'First rate stuff,' I said. 'Let me get this into the straws and frozen up before you say a word. After that, I want to hear exactly what happened.'
Yasmin went to her room to bathe and change. I set about the business in hand. A. R. Woresley and I had agreed that we would make exactly fifty straws of semen for each person. More than that would take up too much room in our travelling sperm-freezer. I set about diluting the semen with egg yolk, skimmed milk and glycerol. I mixed it. I measured it out with a graduated eye-dropper into the little rubber straws. I sealed the straws. I put them on ice for half an hour. I exposed them to nitrogen vapour for a few minutes. Then finally I lowered them gently into the liquid nitrogen and closed the container. It was done. We now had fifty doses of the King of Spain's semen, and strong doses at that. The equation was simple. He gave us three ccs originally. Three ccs would contain approximately three thousand million sperm and those three thousand million, when divided up into fifty doses, would produce a potency of sixty million sperm per dose. This was exactly three times A. R. Woresley's optimum figure of twenty million per dose. In other words, the Spanish Royal straws were of prime potency. I was elated. I rang the bell for service and ordered a bottle of Krug on ice.