The Dragonfly Pool

Her amber eyes glowed with love, her russet hair tumbled down her shoulders, so that its curling fronds made a frame for the globe which she was holding to her breasts.

And what was it, this perfect globe? Not a small sun, though it might well have been; not a golden ball, like the maidens of ancient Greece played with in their palaces—but a pure, round, absolutely unsullied Gruyère cheese.

The audience went mad. Anyone who thought that the Swiss were reserved and did not show their feelings had made a big mistake. They stamped their feet, they clapped, they whistled. One and all had fallen in love with Clemmy.

“You see what I mean?” said Barney, turning to Karil. “And when you think that even now she’s probably feeding my axolotl.”

“Yes, I do,” said Karil, and it seemed to him that a school where this marvelous creature could be one’s housemother was a place apart.

“Gosh, I feel quite homesick, don’t you?” said Julia, and Tally nodded.

But Kit did not share in the praise and pride. He had overdone the cheese tasting. His face looked green. “I feel sick,” he said. “I have to go to the toilet.”

Barney made room for him. “Do you know where it is?”

“No, I don’t.” Kit was feeling very sorry for himself. “I don’t know what ‘Gents’ is in German. I’ll go into the wrong one.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Karil.

The two boys slipped out and made their way out of the hall across a wide landing, down two flights of stairs, and into the dimly lit basement.

Kit was getting desperate, clutching his stomach.

“It’s around the corner . . . Look, here we are.” Karil opened the door and Kit rushed in.

At this point a furious yell could be heard in the distance.

“Karil, what are you doing? Come back at once. You cannot go into a public toilet!”

The Scold waited, but the prince remained out of sight around the corner. Furious, she made her way back to the hall.

Karil waited for a while, then pushed open the door.

Kit had finished being sick and was leaning over the washbasin, shivering. He had reached it too late and there was a considerable mess.

Karil took off Borro’s blue jersey. “Here, put this on and go back to the others. You can find the way back, can’t you? I’ll clear up a bit.”

“Thanks.” Kit slipped on the sweater and made his way out into the corridor.

Karil, wiping the floor with a mop he had found in a cupboard, was remembering Tally’s words. “It isn’t so terrible being a prince,” she had said—and while he didn’t agree with her, it was true that at this point he wouldn’t have minded ringing for a valet and walking away.

He reached the hall as the speeches were coming to an end.

“Where’s Kit?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. Isn’t he with you?” said Barney. “Maybe he’s gone out for some fresh air.”

There was a last burst of clapping and everyone filed out of the hall.

“He can’t have got lost coming up the stairs,” said Tally. “Not even Kit . . .”

But it seemed he had. He wasn’t downstairs in the cheese-tasting hall or in any of the corridors or out in the street.

Frantically they searched the building again and again, they asked the attendants, they called out Kit’s name . . .

But he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A Mistake Is Made

The two men had driven north out of Zurich toward a grassy hill where they expected to get a good signal for their radio and make contact with the SS patrols who were to pick up the prince and take him to Colditz.

Everything had gone well. They’d followed the children from the hotel to the Cheese-Makers’ Guild and bided their time till they could isolate the boy. Their chance had come at the end of the unveiling, when they saw him slip from the room and tracked him to the corridor down in the basement. He stood out clearly enough in his blue jersey, even in the gloom, and if there had been any doubts, the shrieks of the Countess Frederica when she saw him would have put them to rest. If anyone could recognize the prince even at a distance, it was that appalling woman who had looked after him since he was a baby.

Waiting till he came out and grabbing the boy in that deserted corridor had been child’s play. As of an hour ago, both men were richer by a considerable sum.

Now they drove the Mercedes into a ruined shed at the bottom of the hill and Earless opened the sack which lay covered under a blanket in the backseat.

“ ’Ere, come and look at this,” he said to Theophilus. “Not very princely, is he?”

Theophilus came over and peered into the sack. “No, not what you would call princely at all,” he agreed.

What they saw was a weeping, moaning blob curled up at the bottom of the sack, calling for his mother, though everyone knew that the queen had been dead for many years.

Yanking the howling boy out by his shoulders, they examined him.

It was extraordinary how far the squirming little boy was from any idea of a royal personage. Or from the two faded photos of the prince that they had been shown.