It seemed to take an age to get them together. These two men, whom the art world could scarcely separate, proved almost more than my ingenuity. I had assumed that if I had one, the other would follow, as if upon a string. Wasn't that how they always appeared - in identical suits, identical postures, side by side, as if they couldn't even stand to attention without the other for support? But they had wandered in opposite directions around the private gallery, like a methodical single mind which chose to double the distance covered or halve the the time it took to do so. I scarcely had one within my sights before the other vanished; but I knew that when they had finished their appraisals they would have to confer, to synchronise the judgments they had formed. It was while they were standing there, together, that I opened the door of my office and forced them in before me. Neither of them seemed to be paying much attention; I think they were both still too absorbed in what they had seen, or else it took a certain time for their mutual knowledge to propagate, during which interim they were comparatively defenceless.

I closed the door and locked it behind me.

"Now tell me, which of you is Gilbert, and which of you is George?"

"Does it matter?" the first asked with dignity. "We speak togther; we speak for each other. Why do you need to differentiate?"

"It matters, when one has to decide which one of you to consign to hell first."

"Then I am Gilbert," he said proudly.

"For that reason, I know you are George."

"So smart," he said with regretful contempt. "You people - one never knows how much you have in you! So hasty, nevertheless," he added with conscious disapproval; the voice was still mocking, as if unafraid of anything I could do to its speaker.

"You shall go first, George," I said firmly, not allowing him to distract me further.

"Happy to oblige," he said. "I assent to the challenge!" - as if he were quoting someone. To the last, he would be a maverick, unperturbed and unafraid. Even now, he seemed to be trying to bring popular culture to his cause - Americanese, specifically. If he went down, he would at least go down with a colloquialism which I couldn't fault

"You are not American," I said. "You are German. And now you must die. By my hand."

"Such a Utopia," he fussed. "Or should I rather say, Dystopia? If I have a sick cat, I will bring it to you. The two of us, after all, are rather similar. But don't let anything I say keep you from your duty. You British, after all, have never complained about an inflexibility of authority. That has always been the complaint you lay at our door," he said feelingly. "That has always been the complaint you lay on us."

"In a moment you shall meet your maker," I said, unmoved. "Have you any last words?"

"Happy to oblige!" he repeated, with a mocking salute.

"And you, Gilbert, is there anything you would like to say to your companion, before you lose all chance of addressing him again?"

"I stand by him," said Gilbert decisively. "He says my words; I say his."

"So be it," I concluded. "In your pontifical pride, however, you've failed to ask me why I'm doing this thing. Aren't you curious?"

"That is your bigotry," said George, with a shrug. "Ask the milkman why he delivers milk."

"I'll tell you, all the same. I'm doing it to see if one of you can live if the other is dead. Worms have two brains. You can kill the one, but the other lives to tell the tale. Just what sort of an animal are you, Gilbert-George?”

“The pot likes to call the kettle black,” he retorted contemptuously. “You talk to me of animals? What is it, then, that will satisfy you, little mouse-brain?"

The question threw me.

"How much can thrive in a little mouse-mind! Scurrying, scurrying ..." said Gilbert. George hardly nodded; I could see they had been in full agreement from the start.