For this I am sorry, for order means much to me: but, as this book will show, I could not have told the truth while someone whom I shall mention was yet alive. The first I knew of the business was when I was a guest at White Ladies – that was Jonathan Mansel’s beautiful Hampshire home. George Hanbury and I were resting after our labours, by which I mean doing little but put up our feet: but Mansel took next to no rest, although God knows he had laboured as hard as we, and had, as well, directed our enterprise. Indeed, he divided his time between White Ladies and Town, taking the road to London before we were out of bed and only returning in time to dress for dinner and, as he used to put it, to save his face as a host. And then at table one evening, after the cloth had been drawn, he bade us fill up our glasses and listen to what he said. So far as I can, I will set down his very words. “Ten days ago we three were in Austria.” He glanced at his watch. “Very nearly ten days ago we were driving from Villach to Salzburg as hard as ever we could.
