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He began to read the telegram all over again. A shadow fell upon the flimsy sheets. The Rt. Hon. Mr Waterhouse was between the head of the table and the windows. He said:

'We're much obliged, General. It was impossible to hear ourselves speak for those obscene fellows' smut. It's fellows like that make our friends the suffragettes! That warrants them...' He added: 'Hullo! Sandbach! Enjoying your rest?'

The General said:

'I was hoping you'd take on the job of telling these fellows off.'

Mr Sandbach, his bull-dog jaw sticking out, the short black hair on his scalp appearing to rise, barked: 'Hullo, Waterslop! Enjoying your plunder?'

Mr Waterhouse, tall, slouching and untidy-haired, lifted the flaps of his coat. It was so ragged that it appeared as if straws stuck out of the elbows.

'All that the suffragettes have left of me,' he said laughingly. 'Isn't one of you fellows a genius called Tietjens?' He was looking at Macmaster. The General said:

'Tietjens Macmaster...' The Minister went on very friendly:

'Oh, it's you?...I just wanted to take the opportunity of thanking you.'

Tietjens said:

'Good God! What for?'

'You know!' the Minister said, 'we couldn't have got the Bill before the House till next session without your figures...' He said slyly: 'Could we, Sandbach?' and added to Tietjens: 'Ingleby told me...'

Tietjens was chalk-white and stiffened. He stuttered: 'I can't take any credit...I consider...'

Macmaster exclaimed:

'Tietjens...you...' he didn't know what he was going to say.

'Oh, you're too modest,' Mr Waterhouse overwhelmed Tietjens. 'We know whom we've to thank...' His eyes drifted to Sandbach a little absently. Then his face lit up.

'Oh I Look here, Sandbach,' he said...'Come here, will you?' He walked a pace or two away, calling to one of his young men: 'Oh, Sanderson, give the bobbie a drink. A good stiff one.' Sandbach jerked himself awkwardly out of his chair and limped to the Minister.

Tietjens burst out:

'Me too modest! Me!...The swine...The unspeakable swine!'

The General said:

'What's it all about, Chrissie? You probably are too modest.'

Tietjens said:

'Damn it. It's a serious matter. It's driving me out of the unspeakable office I'm in.'

Macmaster said:

'No! No! You're wrong. It's a wrong view you take.' And with a good deal of real passion he began to explain to the General. It was an affair that had already given him a great deal of pain. The Government had asked the statistical department for figures illuminating a number of schedules that they desired to use in presenting their new Bill to the Commons. Mr Waterhouse was to present it.

Mr Waterhouse at the moment was slapping Mr Sandbach on the back, tossing the hair out of his eyes and laughing like an hysterical schoolgirl. He looked suddenly tired. A police constable, his buttons shining, appeared, drinking from a pewter-pot outside the glazed door. The two city men ran across the angle from the dressing-room to the same door, buttoning their clothes. The Minister said loudly:

'Make it guineas!'

It seemed to Macmaster painfully wrong that Tietjens should call anyone so genial and unaffected an unspeakable swine. It was unjust. He went on with his explanation to the General.

The Government had wanted a set of figures based on a calculation called B7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called H19--for his own instruction--had persuaded himself that H19 was the lowest figure that was actuarially sound.

The General said pleasantly: 'All this is Greek to me.'

'Oh no, it needn't be,' Macmaster heard himself say. 'It amounts to this. Chrissie was asked by the Government--by Sir Reginald Ingleby--to work out what 3 x 3 comes to: it was that sort of thing in principle. He said that the only figure that would not ruin the country was nine times nine...'

'The Government wanted to shovel money into the working man's pockets, in fact,' the General said. 'Money for nothing...or votes, I suppose.'

'But that isn't the point,