He had talked. He had got half-a-crown from the porter, and the porter had got a sovereign from Mr. Gamble, who had received fifty pounds in five ten-pound notes in an envelope from Miss Rose Fairweather’s own dainty hands when he had called there the day before at Mr. McAuley’s flat. Mr. Gamble had gone on gaily to his newspaper, and received another twenty pounds from the Financial Editor, to whom Miss Fairweather had specially recommended him. The Financial Editor had got no money indeed, but hearty thanks when next he met his proprietor—I use that word in its fullest sense. Also the Financial Editor had promptly sold his Billies before writing a line.

Anyhow, there the paragraph was, and after all, it could not be contradicted because it was true. There was nothing to be done now, the thing was printed, and it would be known, anyhow, when Parliament met that afternoon: so there was nothing to be done. And Wilfrid Halterton was far too much a gentleman to have words with his permanent officials, anyhow.

He looked at his watch. It was just on ten o’clock. J. would probably be ringing him up any moment now. He waited, and waited, his nervousness increasing; no ring came. It was fully a quarter-past when he could bear the suspense no longer, and himself rang up the flat near the Marble Arch.

Once more the clear accents of Miss Rose Fairweather, delicately balanced between the soft Glasgow and the more lapidary Edinburgh—reflecting therefore, perhaps, an origin in Whitburn—replied like chiselled silver.

Yes, Mr. McAuley had been in for a time that morning, and had worked with her for an hour; but he had gone out again, saying that he would walk to his office, in the City, because he wanted the exercise. He would hardly be there till well after eleven, he had one or two things to do on the way.

At eleven-thirty Wilfrid Halterton, now slightly feverish, took the risk of ringing up the Imperial Durrant’s crowd by the number of their palatial building. It was not very regular, the Postmaster-General was not supposed to do that sort of thing—but after all, it was most unlikely anyone would know his voice, and if by a miracle they did, why—everybody knew that he was a friend of McAuley’s, and that McAuley was a brother of his colleague the Attorney-General. He might be ringing up about anything.

Anyhow, he need not have been in such a stew, for the answer was simple enough.

Yes. … Mr. McAuley had been in, and had attended to a little business. … No, he had gone out again. … He wouldn’t be back till after lunch. They did not know where he had gone to. They couldn’t say when.

Once more did the sorely harassed Wilfrid Halterton challenge the gods—once more, before he went down to his own office at noon. And this time it was again the flat near the Marble Arch which he attacked. And once more did the pellucid, sweetly-divided syllables of Rose Fairweather inform him that Mr. McAuley had indeed rung up his flat, from the Carlton Hotel, where he had happened to be for a moment in the course of the morning, but that it was only about some papers he wanted sent on to him there by messenger, and that he would have left the hotel long ago.

The Postmaster-General had no desire to increase this stream of records, or to emphasize his tracks. He must possess his soul in patience until McAuley should come to him in his rooms at the House, or until in some other way they should meet again. It could not be long.