“I shall have to come to you for it.”

“They won’t let Mr. Bredon out of this department for a bit,” said Miss Meteyard. “They’re all up in the air about his Whifflets stunt. Everybody always hoped Dean would do better somewhere else. He was like a favourite book-you liked him so well that you were always yearning to lend him to somebody else.”

“What a savage woman you are,” observed Ingleby, coolly amused. “It’s that kind of remark that gets the university woman a bad name.” He glanced at Willis, who said:

“It isn’t the savagery. It’s the fact that there’s no animosity behind it. You are all like that.”

“You agree with Shaw-whenever you beat your child, be sure that you do it in anger.”

“Shaw’s Irish,” said Bredon. “Willis has put his finger on the real offensiveness of the educated Englishman-that he will not even trouble to be angry.”

“That’s right,” said Willis. “It’s that awful, bleak, blank-” he waved his hands helplessly-“the facade.”

“Meaning Bredon’s face?” suggested Ingleby, mischievously.

“Icily regular, splendidly null,” said Bredon, squinting into Miss Rossiter’s mirror. “Strange, to think that a whole Whifflets campaign seethes and burgeons behind this solid ivory brow.”

“Mixed metaphor,” said Miss Meteyard. “Pots seethe, plants burgeon.”

“Of course; it is a flower of rhetoric culled from the kitchen-garden.”

“It’s no use, Miss Meteyard,” said Ingleby, “you might as well argue with an eel.”

“Talking of eels,” said Miss Meteyard, abandoning the position, “what’s the matter with Miss Hartley?”

“The hipless wonder? Why?”

“She came up the other day to inform the world that the police were coming to arrest somebody.”

“What?” said Willis.

“You mean, whom?”

“Whom, then?”

“Bredon.”

“Mr. Bredon?” said Miss Parton. “What next, I wonder,”

“You mean, what for? Why don’t you people say what you do mean?”

Miss Rossiter turned on her chair and gazed at Mr. Bredon’s gently twitching mouth.

“That’s funny,” she said. “Do you know, Mr. Bredon, we never told you, but Parton and I thought we saw you actually being arrested one evening, in Piccadilly Circus.”

“Did you?”

“It wasn’t you, of course.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. Still, cheer up-it may happen yet. Only I suppose Pymmy doesn’t keep his millions in the office safe.”

“Nor yet in registered envelopes,” said Miss Meteyard, casually.

“Don’t say they’re after our Mr. Copley!”

“I hope not. Bread-and-skilly wouldn’t suit him at all.”

“But what was Bredon being arrested for?”

“Loitering, perhaps,” said a mild voice in the doorway. Mr. Hankin poked his head round the corner and smiled sarcastically. “I am sorry to interrupt you, but if Mr. Bredon could favour me with his attention for a moment on the subject of Twentyman’s Teas-”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Bredon, springing to attention and allowing himself to be marched off.

Miss Rossiter shook her head.

“You mark my words, there’s a mystery about Mr. Bredon.”

“He’s a darling,” objected Miss Parton, warmly.

“Oh, Bredon’s all right,” said Ingleby.

Miss Meteyard said nothing. She went downstairs to the Executive and borrowed the current volume of Who’s Who. She ran her finger through the W’s, till she came to the entry beginning: “WlMSEY, Peter Death Bredon (Lord), D.S.O., born 1890; second s. of Mortimer Gerald Bredon Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and Honoria Lucasta, d. of Francis Delagardie of Bellingham Manor, Bucks. Educ. Eton College and Balliol.” She read it through.

“So that’s it,” said Miss Meteyard to herself. “I thought so. And now what? Does one do anything? I think not. Better leave it alone. But there’s no harm in putting out feelers for another job. One’s got to look after one’s self.”

Mr. Bredon, unaware that his disguise had been penetrated, gave but a superficial consideration to the interests of Twentyman’s Teas. He meekly accepted the instruction to prepare a window-bill with two streamers on the subject of a richer infusion with fewer spoonfuls, and a gentle rebuke in the matter of wasting time in the typists’ room. His mind was in Old Broad Street.

“You are playing for us on Saturday, I see,” said Mr. Hankin, at the conclusion of the interview.

“Yes, sir.”

“I hope the weather will hold. You have played in first-class cricket, I believe?”

“A long time ago.”

“You will be able to show them a bit of style” said Mr. Hankin, happily. “Style-one sees so little of it nowadays. I am afraid you will find us a scratch lot, and for some reason, several of our best players seem unable to attend this match. A pity. But you will find Mr. Tallboy very good. An excellent all-round man, and quite remarkable in the field.”

Mr. Bredon said that it was all too rare to find proper attention given to fielding. Mr. Hankin agreed with him.

“Mr. Tallboy is excellent at all games; it’s a pity he can’t give more time to them. Personally, I should like to see more organization of the athletic side of our social functions here. But Mr. Pym thinks it would perhaps be too absorbing, and I dare say he is right. Still, I can’t help feeling that the cultivation of the team-spirit would do this office good. I don’t know whether you, as a newcomer, have noticed a certain tension from time to time-”

Bredon admitted that he had noticed something of the sort.

“You know, Mr. Bredon,” said Mr. Hankin, a little wistfully, “it is sometimes difficult for the directors to get the atmosphere of situations in the office. You people keep us rather in cotton-wool, don’t you? It can’t be helped, naturally, but I sometimes fancy that there are currents beneath the surface…”

Evidently, thought Bredon, Mr. Hankin had realized that something was on the point of breaking. He felt suddenly sorry for him. His eyes strayed to a strip poster, printed in violent colours and secured by drawing-pins to Mr. Hankin’s notice-board:

EVERYONE EVERYWHERE ALWAYS AGREES

ON THE FLAVOUR AND VALUE OF TWENTYMAN’S TEAS

No doubt it was because agreement on any point was so rare in a quarrelsome world, that the fantastical announcements of advertisers asserted it so strongly and so absurdly. Actually, there was no agreement, either on trivialities like tea or on greater issues. In this place, where from morning till night a staff of over a hundred people hymned the praises of thrift, virtue, harmony, eupepsia and domestic contentment, the spiritual atmosphere was clamorous with financial storm, intrigue, dissension, indigestion and marital infidelity. And with worse things-with murder wholesale and retail, of soul and body, murder by weapon and by poison. These things did not advertise, or, if they did, they called themselves by other names.

He made some vague answer to Mr. Hankin.

At one o’clock he left the office and took a taxi citywards. He was suddenly filled with a curiosity to visit Mr. Tallboy’s stockbroker.

At twenty minutes past one, he was standing on the pavement in Old Broad Street, and his blood was leaping with the excitement which always accompanies discovery.

Mr. Tallboy’s stockbroker inhabited a small tobacconist’s shop, the name over which was not Smith but Cummings.

“An accommodation address,” observed Lord Peter Wimsey. “Most unusual for a stockbroker. Let us probe this matter further.”

He entered the shop, which was narrow, confined and exceedingly dark. An elderly man stepped forward to serve him. Wimsey went immediately to the point.

“Can I see Mr. Smith?”

“Mr. Smith doesn’t live here.”

“Then perhaps you would kindly let me leave a note for him.”