Dictator's Way by E.R. Punshon

my face and we haven’t seen her since – and she owes us nearly fifty pounds.”
    â€œDear, dear,” said Bobby.
    â€œIf you ask me,” declared the girl, “in this country, we want Hitler.”
    â€œToo bad,” said Bobby. “Er – Miss Farrar’s private address?”
    â€œIs it speeding or obstruction?” she inquired, quite human now. “It isn’t dangerous driving, is it? If you’ve got the summons with you, you might as well leave it.”
    Bobby explained that it wasn’t a summons, that it wasn’t even motoring, but that it was important. The girl explained that this was Miss Farrar’s private as well as her business address. She occupied two rooms above for living purposes. She was out at the moment and would not be back for some time. She had mentioned that she was lunching with a friend. It was someone she was to meet at the Twin Wolves and as that was some distance away it would probably be well on in the afternoon before she returned. Bobby might try again about half-past three or four.
    The reference to the ‘Twin Wolves’ had been dropped casually but Bobby was evidently expected to be impressed. The ‘Twin Wolves’ was indeed a recent discovery of the people who like to consider themselves ‘smart’. Anyone can discover a little restaurant in Soho, and as for the Ritz and the Savoy the difficulty is to avoid discovering them. But to find in an entirely out of the way quarter of the town a restaurant of such quality was quite a thrill, and there’s not a gossip writer on any London paper but would sell his immortal soul for something new to talk about. So they had fallen with avidity on the ‘Twin Wolves’ and its almost romantic suburban isolation. Now it was the rage.
    To tell your friends you were dining at the Savoy was merely snobbish, to say you knew a wonderful little place in Soho entirely commonplace, since so did everyone else, but to remark that you were motoring out to the suburbs for dinner and that nothing would induce you to say whether you were bound for Brixton, Islington, or Kilburn, that did indeed make your friends stare and talk and wonder. Then you chatted a little about the ‘Twin Wolves’ – you didn’t mind giving the name of the restaurant, but not its address, you didn’t want it overrun and ruined in a week or two – and you expatiated on the absolutely marvellous food. The wines you agreed could be matched in the West End, for rare wines are a matter of money and the expert knowledge that money can buy. But cooking’s an individual thing, a thing of taste, of instinct, of innate genius. Think of the great Boulestin, had he ever had a lesson? Was not his pre-eminence due to such a direct gift from Heaven as that which enabled Pascal to re-write Euclid for himself at the age of ten? The same sort of thing at the ‘Twin Wolves’, only there even in excelsis . One awe-stricken patron had been heard to murmur that there they could turn cold boiled mutton into ambrosia and make nectar out of stewed tea.
    You had to know the ropes, too. If you were one of the common herd you sat downstairs and might even order such things as – excuse their mention – steak and kidney pie, fish and chips, or even suet pudding, yes, suet pudding itself as often as not with raisins in it. But, being instructed, you found the almost hidden stairs at the back, and in the long, plain room upstairs, you could be served with Etrurian delicacies as ‘Oie farcie à l’imperial’ or ‘poulet pourri caesarian’. The restaurant was in fact kept by a fat little Etrurian, long resident in England. His name was Troya – Thomas Troya – and his recent leap to fame was said to be accounted for very largely by the culinary genius of his second wife. During the lifetime of Mr. Troya’s first wife and during his brief widowhood, the ‘Twin