Gently from behind clenched teeth I asked: “And if I do not submit? And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the Steppenwolf, and to meddle in his destiny?”

“Then,” said Mozart calmly, “I should invite you to smoke another of my charming cigarettes.” And as he spoke and conjured up a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and offered it me, he was suddenly Mozart no longer. It was my friend Pablo looking warmly at me out of his dark exotic eyes and as like the man who had taught me to play chess with the little figures as a twin.

“Pablo!” I cried with a convulsive start. “Pablo, where are we?”

“We are in my Magic Theatre,” he said with a smile, “and if you wish at any time to learn the Tango or to be a General or to have a talk with Alexander the Great, it is always at your service. But I’m bound to say, Harry, you have disappointed me a little. You forgot yourself badly. You broke through the humour of my little theatre and tried to make a mess of it, stabbing with knives and spattering our pretty picture-world with the mud of reality. That was not pretty of you. I hope, at least, you did it from jealousy when you saw Hermine and me lying there. Unfortunately, you did not know what to do with this figure. I thought you had learnt the game better. Well, you will do better next time.”

He took Hermine who at once shrank in his fingers to the dimensions of a toy-figure and put her in the very same waistcoat-pocket from which he had taken the cigarette.

Its sweet and heavy smoke diffused a pleasant aroma. I was utterly done-up and ready to sleep for a year.