White Eagles Over Serbia Read Free Page B

the Levant; lovely corals from the Red Sea; dried herbs from China; chess-men carved in wood and ivory by Burmese prisoners. The visitors to his little shop were legion, though they were never men of title or importance. Lascars from the liners brought him precious stones and carvings picked up in the ports of the East; scholars and collectors in the humbler walks of life traded him ancient coins against gems or manuscripts. But no visitor ever escaped sharing a black coffee with him in the work-room at the back of the shop, and these business conversations enabled him to pick up a mass of miscellaneous information about foreign countries which was of the utmost interest to Dombey’s little band of enthusiasts in SOq.
    Boris was a Galician Jew who had emigrated to London in the early twenties and had rapidly established himself in business as a wig-maker; but his range of interests was too large to be confined, and he rapidly expanded his business in a hundred unorthodox directions. He had also in the past performed several difficult and dangerous missions for the organization to which Methuen belonged, though he never accepted a bounty for them. He would explain gravely that the security of British citizenship was a bounty freely bestowed upon him which he felt that he could never repay. To take money for his services to the Crown was more than he could bear. “What I do, I do because I am proud to be accepted in the British family,” he would say, his hand on his heart.
    Many had been the attempts to coax him into SOq, but he valued his independence too much to become a full member of an organization so exacting in its demands upon his time. He remained nevertheless an unofficial ally of the brotherhood his usefulness growing with the years; he had become almost an institution, and there was hardly an operator who would undertake a mission to a little-known country without first asking Boris to offer him a brief. Methuen was no exception to the rule.
    â€œBoris,” he called again, and putting his ear to the flap of the letter-box was relieved to hear the familiar shuffling step of the wig-maker as he crossed the dark floor to the light-switch. The light came on and Boris stood there staring at him through the glass like a small and rather soiled penguin. His black beard was uncombed and he fumbled with the pince-nez which always dangled round his waist on a length of string. He got Methuen into focus at last and smiled. “Methuen!” he said. “Welcome back,” drawing the stiff bolts of the door, and repeating “Welcome back”. He locked the door carefully behind his visitor and led the way to the back of the shop. The great work-room was brightly lit, and full of the smell of coffee which simmered in a pot on the gas-stove.
    Methuen looked around him with amused interest. “What have you got here?” he said. Boris rummaged in a cupboard for a cup and saucer. A large silver wig stood upon a wooden pedestal obviously half-finished; next to it, offering a grotesque contrast, were two shrunken human heads in bottles. “Peruvian,” said Boris. “They came in yesterday. One is all that remains of Atahualpa, the Indian who started the revolution years ago, remember?” “My God,” said Methuen, “one of these days someone is going to stroll in to you with my head in a bottle. You won’t turn a hair.”
    Boris looked shocked. “I should be upsetted to see my friend in a bottle,” he said severely. Sometimes he found it a little difficult to appreciate the English sense of humour. “I am selling these to the Science Museum,” he added irrelevantly. “But my dear, my darling,” he went on in a burst of enthusiasm, “wait till Dombey sees what I have for him.” From a shelf he reached down two large cases of beautiful moths, neatly pinned to corks and classified. “Such beautiful things!”
    They chatted for a