“I believe we did,” said Tallboy. “Was it Scotch, and would people know what it meant? Would it suggest that we were calling women cows? And wasn’t the sketch a little modernistic? But Armstrong got it shoved through somehow. May I drop this in your ‘Out’ basket, Miss Rossiter?”

“Serpently,” replied the lady, with gracious humour, presenting the basket to receive the latter. “All billy-doos receive our prompt attention and are immediately forwarded to their destination by the quickest and surest route.”

“Let’s see,” said Garrett. “I bet it’s to a lady, and him a married man, too! No, you don’t, Tallboy, you old devil-stand still, will you? Tell us who it is, Miss Rossiter.”

“K. Smith, Esq.,” said Miss Rossiter. “You lose your bet.”

“What a swizz! But I expect it’s all camouflage. I suspect Tallboy of keeping a harem somewhere. You can’t trust these handsome blue-eyed men.”

“Shut up, Garrett. I never,” said Mr. Tallboy, extricating himself from Garrett’s grasp and giving him a playful punch in the wind, “in my life, met with such a bunch of buttinskis as you are in this department. Nothing is sacred to you, not even a man’s business correspondence.”

“How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?” demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. “We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. ‘Mother! has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?’ ‘Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?’ ‘Are you satisfied about your Drains?’ ‘Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?’ ‘Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.’ ‘Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?’ ‘Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?’ ‘Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?’ ‘If anything Happened to you, would your Loved Ones be Safe?’ ‘Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?’ ‘You think that Carpet is Clean-but is it?’ ‘Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?’ Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn’t rise up and slay us.”

“They don’t know of our existence,” said Garrett. “They all think advertisements write themselves. When I tell people I’m in advertising, they always ask whether I design posters-they never think about the copy.”

“They think the manufacturer does it himself,” said Ingleby.

“They ought to see some of the suggestions the manufacturer does put up when he tries his hand at it.”

“I wish they could.” Ingleby grinned. “That reminds me. You know that idiotic thing Darling’s put out the other day-the air-cushion for travellers with a doll that fits into the middle and sits up holding an ‘ENGAGED’ label?”

“What for?” asked Bredon.

“Well, the idea is, that you plank the cushion down in the railway carriage and the doll proclaims that the place is taken.”

“But the cushion would do that without the doll.”

“Of course it would, but you know how silly people are. They like superfluities. Well, anyway, they-Darling’s, I mean-got out an ad. for the rubbish all by their little selves, and were fearfully pleased with it. Wanted us to put it through for them, till Armstrong burst into one of his juicy laughs and made them blush.”

“What was it?”

“Picture of a nice girl bending down to put the cushion in the corner of a carriage. And the headline? ‘DONT LET THEM PINCH YOUR SEAT.’”

“Attaboy!” said Mr. Bredon.

The new copy-writer was surprisingly industrious that day. He was still in his room, toiling over Sanfect (“Wherever there’s Dirt there’s Danger!”

“The Skeleton in the Watercloset,”

“Assassins Lurk in your Scullery!”

“Deadlier than Shell-Fire-GERMS!!!”) when Mrs. Crump led in her female army to attack the day’s accumulated dirt-armed, one regrets to say, not with Sanfect, but with plain yellow soap and water.

“Come in, come in!” cried Mr. Bredon, genially, as the good lady paused reverently at his door. “Come and sweep me and my works away with the rest of the rubbish.”

“Well, I’m sure, sir,” said Mrs. Crump, “I’ve no need to be disturbing you.”

“I’ve finished, really,” said Bredon. “I suppose there’s an awful lot of stuff to clear out here every day.”

“That there is, sir-you’d hardly believe. Paper-well, I’m sure paper must be cheap, the amount they waste. Sackfuls and sackfuls every evening goes out. Of course, it’s disposed of to the mills, but all the same it must be a dreadful expense. And there’s boxes and boards and odds and ends-you’d be surprised, the things we picks up. I sometimes think the ladies and gentlemen brings up all their cast-offs on purpose to throw ’em away here.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“And mostly chucked on the floor,” resumed Mrs. Crump, warming to her theme, “hardly ever in the paper-baskets, though goodness knows they make ’em big enough.”

“It must give you a lot of trouble.”

“Lor’, sir, we don’t think nothing of it. We just sweeps the lot up and sends the sacks down by the lift. Though sometimes we has a good laugh over the queer things we finds. I usually just give the stuff a look through to make sure there’s nothing valuable got dropped by mistake. Once I found two pound-notes on Mr. Ingleby’s floor. He’s a careless one and no mistake. And not so long ago-the very day poor Mr. Dean had his sad accident, I found a kind of carved stone lying round in the passage-looked as though it might be a charm or a trinket or something of that. But I think it must have tumbled out of the poor gentleman’s pocket as he fell, because Mrs. Doolittle said she’d seen it in his room, so I brought it in here, sir, and put it in that there little box.”

“Is this it?” Bredon fished in his waistcoat pocket and produced the onyx scarab, which he had unaccountably neglected to return to Pamela Dean.

“That’s it, sir. A comical-looking thing, ain’t it? Like it might be a beetle or such. It was lying in a dark corner under the iron staircase and at first I thought it was just a pebble like the other one.”

“What other one?”

“Well, sir, I found a little round pebble in the very same place only a few days before. I said at the time, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s a funny thing to find there.’ But I reckon that one must have come from Mr. Atkins’s room, him having taken his seaside holiday early this year on account of having been ill, and you know how people do fill up their pockets with sea-shells and pebbles and such.”

Bredon hunted in his pocket again.

“Something like that, was it?” He held out a smooth, water-rounded pebble, about the size of his thumbnail.

“Very like it, sir. Did that come out of the passage, sir, might I ask?”

“No-I found that up on the roof.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Crump. “It’ll be them boys up to their games. When the Sergeant’s eye is off them you never know what they’re after.”

“They do their drill up there, don’t they? Great stuff. Hardens the muscles and develops the figure. When do they perform? In the lunch-hour?”

“Oh, no, sir. Mr. Pym won’t have them running about after their dinners. He says it spoils their digestions and gives them the colic. Very particular, is Mr. Pym. Half-past eight regular they has to be on duty, sir, in their pants and singlets. Twenty minutes they has of it and then changed and ready for their dooties. After dinner they sets a bit in the boys’ room and has a read or plays something quiet, as it might be, shove ha’penny or tiddley-winks or such. But in their room they must stay, sir; Mr. Pym won’t have nobody about the office in the dinner-hour, sir, not without, of course, it’s the boy that goes round with the disinfectant, sir.”

“Ah, of course! Spray with Sanfect and you’re safe.”

“That’s right, sir, except that they uses Jeyes’ Fluid.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Bredon, struck afresh by the curious reluctance of advertising firms to use the commodities they extol for a living. “Well, we’re very well looked after here, Mrs. Crump, what?”