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talent for staff work and planning had taken him indoors to fight the navy and Congress, while Dennis, by preference, was still flying and commanding small echelons. Among the other factors, Kane had had to weigh operational against diplomatic capability.
    Earlier in his own career Kane had had to make the same essential choice for himself. He had judged that the future lay inside. He had lived through the bitterness of seeing some of the men who stayed out of doors appointed to superior commands which he himself had blueprinted. The lesson had not escaped him, nor had the fact that Garnett was urged upon him and Dennis stubbornly denied him.
    He had taken Dennis, and the victory of getting him, as proof of his own power at first. But with Garnett’s consolatory appointment to the Secretaryship of the United Chiefs of Staff the decision had returned to haunt Kane. Confirmation that he was big enough to demand, and get, Dennis had automatically reduced Dennis in his eyes.
    For Dennis never would have taken the job with the United Chiefs anyway, and but for Kane’s own choice would by now probably have been safely sidetracked in the Pacific. Whereas Garnett, in the Pentagon, and conscious of Kane’s known refusal of him, was dangerous. His sudden arrival in London on business that Kane instantly recognized as insufficient for an emissary of such weight had given Kane considerable anxiety.
    ***
    Dennis, jumping to attention at Evans’s announcement, saw instantly that Kane was worried about something. He carried his hard, spare figure more jauntily than ever. The ruddy face under the jet-black hair was frozen in the fixed, unnatural smile which the army had once used to adorn recruiting posters. His air of affable, almost exuberant cordiality would have persuaded any stranger, as it was worn to persuade Dennis, that he hadn’t a care in the world. Not until he saw Garnett step through the door after Kane did Dennis understand.
    “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said. “If I’d known you were visiting us I’d have been at the gate.”
    “Don’t speak of it, Casey, don’t speak of it. Cliff Garnett here wanted to see a real operational headquarters at work so I brought him straight down from London without waiting on protocol. You remember Cliff, of course?”
    At another time Dennis might have laughed. Every regular in the army knew that Garnett was the fifth successive General Officer of his name. The Garnett legend had begun at Chapultepec. He and Dennis had been classmates. They had worked together as young men and, with their brides, lived across the fences from each other in the dismal family quarters at Hawaii, in the Philippines, in the Canal Zone. They had run neck and neck for the first silver bar in the class. Dennis had got it. Later they had drifted apart a little. But within the narrow confines of the Corps itself they had remained as aware of each other as vice-presidents in a small firm. Garnett had got his star first but Dennis had the Fifth Division. At least, he reflected, he had had it until now.
    “Hello, Casey. You fellows are certainly doing a wonderful job over here.”
    He muttered something which he hoped sounded satisfactorily responsive and studied Garnett himself. The Pentagon had washed away the deep tan that had always been Garnett’s peacetime pride. Once he had been assiduous about exercise; now his tailor would have been shocked at the tightness of that excellent uniform. He was not yet fat, but desk work and deprivation of exercise showed quickly on him. Dennis noted with amusement that he had already managed to procure one of the little British sword canes which so delighted some American generals in London. Then with a start Dennis realized he’d been away from the higher echelons too long. Garnett hadn’t had time to procure that toy: Kane had given it to him.
    But Kane was now ostentatiously introducing him to a major whom the General presented as his new aide. The handshake was