Churchill was forty, exactly ten years younger than Walden. He was a short, slender man who dressed in a way Walden thought was a shade too elegant to be quite gentlemanly. His hair was receding rapidly, leaving a peak at the forehead and two curls at the temples which, together with his short nose and the permanent sardonic twinkle in his eye, gave him a mischievous look. It was easy to see why the cartoonists regularly portrayed him as a malign cherub.

Churchill shook hands and said cheerfully: “Good afternoon, Lord Walden.” He bowed to Lydia. “Lady Walden, how do you do?”

Walden thought: What is it about him that grates so on my nerves?

Lydia offered him tea and Walden told him to sit down. Walden would not make small talk: he was impatient to know what all the fuss was about.

Churchill began: “First of all my apologies, together with the King’s, for imposing myself on you.”

Walden nodded. He was not going to say it was perfectly all right.

Churchill said: “I might add that I should not have done so, other than for the most compelling reasons.”

“You’d better tell me what they are.”

“Do you know what has been happening in the money market?”

“Yes. The discount rate has gone up.”

“From one and three quarters to just under three percent. It’s an enormous rise, and it has come about in a few weeks.”

“I presume you know why.”

Churchill nodded. “German companies have been factoring debts on a vast scale, collecting cash and buying gold. A few more weeks of this and Germany will have got in everything owing to her from other countries, while leaving her debts to them outstanding-and her gold reserves will be higher than they have ever been before.”

“They are preparing for war.”

“In this and other ways. They have raised a levy of one billion marks, over and above normal taxation, to improve an army that is already the strongest in Europe. You will remember that in 1909, when Lloyd George increased British taxation by fifteen million pounds sterling, there was almost a revolution. Well, a billion marks is equivalent to fifty million pounds. It’s the biggest levy in European history-”