Solly was a man of action. Within a minute he was talking to the
managing director of the Mammoth Syndicate Halls on the telephone. In
five minutes the managing director had agreed to pay Prince Otto of
Saxe-Pfennig five hundred pounds a week, if he could be prevailed upon
to appear. In ten minutes the Grand Duke Vodkakoff had been engaged,
subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the
Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne,
having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and
Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for
the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to the
Russian lines at Hampstead.

General Vodkakoff received his visitor civilly, but at first without
enthusiasm. There were, it seemed, objections to his becoming an
artiste. Would he have to wear a properly bald head and sing songs
about wanting people to see his girl? He didn't think he could. He had
only sung once in his life, and that was twenty years ago at a
bump-supper at Moscow University. And even then, he confided to Mr.
Quhayne, it had taken a decanter and a-half of neat vodka to bring him
up to the scratch.

The agent ridiculed the idea.

"Why, your Grand Grace," he cried, "there won't be anything of that
sort. You ain't going to be starred as a _comic_. You're a Refined
Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with
lights down and the cinematograph going. We can easily fake the
pictures."