The only trouble was whether you would consent. For we know how you value your leisure. But do say yes! It would be a personal favour to me; and, what I am afraid I value even more, you would make all the difference to what is now a great public service. I am putting my whole heart into this, and I do beg you not to refuse.

“Yrs. ever,

“JAS. HAGGISMUIR MCAULEY.”

It was a fine clear signature, worthy of the man whose mother had been born a Haggismuir of Haggismuir.

Mr. Wilfrid Halterton finished his reading of it, and looked up. There was, what is odd in a man well over fifty, and especially in a man over fifty whose genius has raised him to one of the greatest public positions in the world, a faint tinge of colour upon either cheek.

“I think, J.,” he said, “I think it would be more … er, regular, wouldn’t it, if you were just to write a … a postscript with a word or two about … well, about the salary?”

“Regular again, Wilfrid!” said J., with that same faint momentary half-smile of a few minutes before. “All right. What was it I said the other day?”

There was a long pause. At last, almost in a whisper, came the words:

“You said ten thousand, J.” Then, in a still lower tone, “Free of tax.”

“All right, Wilfrid,” replied J., in a cheerier tone than he had yet used. He scribbled off the postscript, and after that the figures, then the phrase, “Free of tax,” he added, “and official residence, of course, if you care to use it.” And the neat initials followed: “J.H.M.”

The Postmaster-General was not quite sure; he had always understood that an initialled addendum to a memorandum or habendum ridendum, or any other official binding thing, “went,” as the saying goes. At any rate, he felt he could not ask for anything more.

“Now,” said J., in a more business-like tone than he had yet used, “ye’ll keep that—and date it when the time comes.”

“I suppose it will need some address, won’t it?” asked Halterton.

“Hey? What does that matter? Ye can add it. Ye can write in whatever you like. That’s not what counts. ’Tis my name at the end that counts. Ye can write in wherever I happen to be at the time.”

“Very well, very well,” said Halterton.

James Haggismuir McAuley got up and stretched himself. He also yawned, which, with him, was a gesture of satisfaction and completeness: but he was careful to put his hand in front of his mouth.

“Now,” said he, “we must get them in their envelopes, and we’ll each take his own. … I’ve brought the envelopes to fit—not that it matters much. Do you sign yours—your typewritten one.”

Wilfrid Halterton brought out his little fountain pen mounted in gold and slowly inscribed his name. McAuley blotted the same: folded the fateful document which gave the contract, stuck it in the open envelope; gummed it carefully down and put it in the inner pocket of his coat.

Halterton, always influenced by example, more slowly pocketed James McAuley’s generous and as yet undated offer. But he added something of his own, under a vague feeling that it rendered him more secure. He took up a pencil and wrote, in his rather straggling hand, across the top of the paper which James McAuley had given him:—

“James McAuley’s letter. Handed to me March 3, 1960. W.H.”

He could always rub it out when the time came to use it, and meanwhile there it was as a sort of record. McAuley watched him as he wrote and folded it with too much deliberation, and put it into its corresponding envelope, making only one boss shot. Then, licking the flap and pressing it down, to keep state secrets hidden from all profane eyes, Wilfrid Halterton, Postmaster-General, put the envelope into the pocket of the morning coat he was wearing—the side-pocket away from Mr. McAuley.

“Now,” said that great captain of industry—or, at least, of applied science—or anyhow, of finance; “I must be off.” He looked at his watch for about the fourth time. “Aye, man! I must be off.