“Do you think he’ll have the manuscript with him?”

“He’ll be a damn fool if he does,” Chavasse said. “I’ll try and make arrangements to meet him at some later date to see the manuscript. From that point anything can happen, but I’m hoping the trail will lead me to Bormann.”

“We’ll drink to that,” Sir George said, and refilled his glass. After a moment’s silence, he said inquiringly, “Chavasse – that’s a French name, isn’t it?”

Chavasse nodded. “My father was a lawyer in Paris, but my mother was English. He was an officer in the reserve – killed at Arras when the Panzers broke through in 1940. I was only eleven at the time. My mother and I came out through Dunkirk.”

“So you weren’t old enough to serve in the war?” Sir George carefully lit a small cigar and carried on. “I was in the first lot, you know. Lieutenant at twenty – lieutenant colonel at twenty-four. Promotion was quick in those days.”

“It must have been pretty rough,” Chavasse said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sir George told him. “There was a wonderful spirit abroad. People still clung to the old values. It was after the war that the rot set in.”

“The lost generation,” Chavasse said.

Sir George stared back into the past and sighed. “Everything changed – nothing was ever quite the same again. I went into politics like many others, with the intention of doing something about it, but we were too late.”

“A civilization in decline,” Chavasse said.

“One could draw a remarkable parallel between the British and Roman Empires,” Sir George said. “Universal suffrage and the voice of the mob leading to an internal weakness and eventual collapse, the barbarians at the gates.” He got to his feet and smiled. “If I sound like an old-fashioned imperialist, forgive me. Frankly, I look back on the days of Empire with nostalgia. However, we could talk in this vein all night and that won’t do at all.”