Epilogue N 1 (the original planned)

(Three and a half years later…)

"Professor, I'd rather not spoil the festive mood by speaking of the year I first met you and Mrs. Higgins. I owe you too much…"

"Nonsense, Thomas, it's you towhom I owe my life, at least twice."

"Twice, sir?"

"Yes; once during that bleeding Nazi bombing of our district and, before that, on that crucial evening when you wanted, as our dear Eliza used to say, to do me in, but changed your mind…"

"Sir, I'd rather not talk of…"

"Come on, there are no strangers here, only family, and I always wondered what stopped you in that crucial moment, when you could've chosen to do something entirely different."

Tom regarded him evenly; there would be no secrets between the two, if in this single instance alone. "Actually…to accomplish that…act, one has to mean it. Besides…Wait, Professor! Do you mean that you knew?"

"Of course I was aware of your intentions as soon you asked your "big question," and even earlier than that. Your whole Prince-of-Denmark posture made me guess, along with the fact I know a thing or two about you East End chaps."

"You knew it all along and you did nothing to stop me?"

"Why should I? In the end, it was Someone Else who did. Besides, there was still a chance you could change your mind, and I was willing to take a risk." He gave Tom an encouraging wink "You know by now that I like a good challenge, don't you?"

"Beg pardon, Professor, but to take such a risk…And all for someone who was nobody to you…you must have been incredibly mad!"

"Well, perhaps I was. Perhaps I still am. You know, we, true scientists—including you, my boy!—are all a little bit bonkers. Just imagine, Thomas! A certain professor takes a flower girl from the gutter and makes her into a great lady, in all sense of that fine word. A couple of decades later the same eccentric old fellow meets a young, orphaned, ambitious delinquent with psychopathic trends and an idée fix for world domination, and agrees to make him a lord, and then after several years of association, he succeeds even better—he makes a man of him! And not a bad man at all, let me tell you! Do you now agree that old Britain is a country of mad genius?"

"Or of genial madmen, sir!"

"Well, it's all the same, my boy! Now, before you tell me the latest news of your research work, perhaps we could indulge ourselves a little?"

"To tell the truth, sir, I'd like to! The stuff they offer on the train…"

"Who cares about train food? Eliza, dearest, will you fetch that bottle of champagne you've been hiding since the war began? And be sure not to forget about the cake!"