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the moment of that first impetuous telephone call, an air of suspense had hung over the office like a gale warning. It was nearly eleven-fifteen before the storm finally broke.
    But even if Sir Harry was late he certainly got down to things as soon as he reached his room. He sent for his son straightaway. And it was obvious from the start that he was right at the top of his form. He had his little note-book open on the desk by the time Mr. Rammell arrived, and he was poring over the mass of jottings that had been so clear to him when he had made them, and were now somehow so puzzling.
    It was apparently the staff pensions fund that was exercising him most this morning. Some time during the night he had thought up a scheme for a vast new rest home somewhere on the South Coast outside Bognor Regis, and he wanted his son to hear. But why Bognor? Mr. Rammell kept asking. Why a new rest home at all? Why even mention pensions when they had all been agreed by the Staff Association only last year? There was no time, however, to go back over that now. The old man’s mind darted back and forth across the conversation like an intoxicated butterfly. It was off again on another of its zigzags. Why didn’t they sell more billiard tables? Had the game gone out of favour, or was there something wrong with the department? Was the Dramatic Society right in doing
Hay Fever,
or shouldn’t they stick to things like
The Quaker Girl
which had been their first big success? Wouldn’t escalators throughout the whole store save the cost of lift-attendants? Why were Jamaican cigars such a terrible price? Could he have by to-morrow please a list showing how much everything in the Fur Salon had gone up since 1939?
    But this was only the small stuff that had been passing throughSir Harry’s mind. He was only now getting to the real point of his visit.
    â€œI’ve been thinkin’,” he began.
    Mr. Rammell felt a new area of coldness developing inside his stomach.
    â€œWhen’s Tony comin’ into the firm?” Sir Harry went on. “Time the boy did somethin’. No good bein’ soft with the lad.”
    Mr. Rammell did not reply immediately. The one subject that he did not want to discuss with anyone, least of all with his father, was Tony. The young man was altogether too mysterious. Too unaccountable. Too much like his mother. He seemed to have inherited none of the real Rammell qualities at all. He was twenty-three. And he might have been born yesterday for all the sense of family responsibility that he showed. And what made it so particularly maddening that the old man should have chosen this moment to ask him about Tony was the fact that only last week he and Tony had had a real set-to about the same thing. Neither of them had properly recovered from it, in fact. Apparently there were at least two people in London—Tony Rammell as well as Irene Privett—who didn’t want to go into Bond Street on any terms.
    But already Sir Harry was off again.
    â€œGot to be someone to run the place,” he said. “You and I aren’t so young as we used to be.”
    Mr. Rammell raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
    â€œYou don’t look so good. Ought to give yourself a holiday,” Sir Harry continued.
    Mr. Rammell stirred uneasily.
    â€œI’m all right,” he answered. “Nothing wrong with me.”
    It was a particularly delicate point this, the subject of Mr. Rammell’s health. He knew how bad his digestion was. And so did his doctor. There, however, so far as he was concerned, was where Mr. Rammell felt that the matter should end. He wanted other people to make allowances for his weakness. Not refer to it.
    â€œLook at
me
” his father advised him. “I take care of myself.”
    Mr. Rammell looked. Sir Harry was sitting right on the edge of his chair snipping the end off a cigar. The cutter was a brand new one. He had, in fact, discovered it that very morning