As Berry and I Were Saying by Dornford Yates Page A

coincidences – each of them very strange. The whole of the tale is strange, and only about one-fifth has ever been told. Perhaps, if I changed some names…”
    “We’ll leave that to you.”
    “Madame la Comtesse de B— was the most remarkable woman I ever met. Her virtues were outstanding, and she had glaring faults. Her personality was the most powerful I ever knew. I never met her until she was fifty-five, but in her youth she must have been dazzling, indeed. For her own sex, she had a profound contempt: her conversation was brilliant; her sense of humour was rare. She was immensely rich.
    “One summer’s day, when she was in Austria, a cable arrived from London. This was how it ran. Have been robbed please cable me twenty pounds George Dixon .
    “Now she knew George Dixon well. He was an English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. I came to know him, too. And I feel bound to say, although I am not a Roman Catholic, that Monseigneur Dixon would have greatly distinguished the English Catholic Church.”
    “You put him in Anthony Lyveden and Valerie French .”
    “Yes, I did,” said I. “He was Cardinal Forest . In fact Dixon never lived to get the red hat. He would have had it, if Pius the Tenth hadn’t died: for the latter was very fond of Dixon: he used to call him ‘Dixon meus’ . But all of that’s by the way.
    “Madame de B— knew Dixon very well; and she knew that he was in England, on leave from Rome. But she did not believe that the cable had come from him, for he had friends in England to whom he could have applied. Yet she dared not ignore it, in case he was the sender and needed her help. The office of origin was on the Surrey side: the address was that of a house in a London Street; but she did not know London well, so these things didn’t help. And so she cabled the money. At the same time she wrote to Dixon’s address in Rome, to which she knew that he would shortly return.
    “In a few days’ time she had another cable. This came from Rome. No such cable was ever sent by me George Dixon . This confirmed her suspicions that she had been fooled. And Madame de B— was the wrong sort of woman to fool.
    “Now she instantly made up her mind that the fraudulent cable had been sent by a play-boy she knew very well. (Their relation was strictly moral; but her acquaintance was wide.) He was, she knew, in England at the time at which the cable was sent, and they had lately quarrelled – he and she. No doubt this was his idea of twisting her tail. She decided that he must be taught that such ideas did not pay. So she wrote to her London detective – a first-rate man.
    “The detective soon reported that the address on the cable was what is known as an ‘accommodation address’: it was, in fact, that of a small tobacconist’s shop in a street which ran a stone’s throw from Waterloo. The woman and her daughter, who kept it, remembered ‘Mr George Dixon’ and they described the play-boy without any prompting at all. That was enough for Madame de B— , and she instructed her detective to seek a warrant at once. He respectfully replied that such information would not be enough for the Court and that identification must take place.
    “Now the play-boy was French – a younger son of a very great family. He hadn’t a bean, but he was one of those blokes who never sink lower than the Ritz.”
    “That,” said my wife, “is out of one of your books. She Fell Among Thieves , I think.”
    “You’re right,” said I, “and I apologize. But it exactly describes him.”
    “It exactly describes,” said Berry, “a lot of wallahs I’ve met. How the hell they do it, I’ve no idea. But you’ve got to hand it to them, and the fact remains.”
    “Well, the play-boy was French, and he was back in France. In fact, he was at the Ritz. So the mother and daughter, who kept the tobacconist’s shop, were taken over to Paris at vast expense. There they were put in a taxi, to sit outside the Ritz and