“Are you sure?  Are you quite sure that Mr. Carrel Quire is not spending twice as much as his ministerial salary, that salary being the whole of his financial resources except loans from millionaires who will accept influence instead of interest?  I won’t enquire whether Mr. Carrel Quire pays your salary regularly.  If he does, it furnishes the only instance of regularity in the whole of his gorgeous career.  If our little affair becomes public it might ruin Mr. Carrel Quire as a politician—­at the least it would set him back for ten years.  And I am particularly anxious to ruin Mr. Carrel Quire.  In doing so I shall accomplish a patriotic act.”

“Oh, Mr. Prohack!”

“Yes.  Mr. Carrel Quire may be—­probably is—­a delightful fellow, but he is too full of brains, and he constitutes the gravest danger that has threatened the British Empire for a hundred years.  Hence it is my duty to ruin him if I get the chance; and I’ve got the chance.  I don’t see how he could survive the exposure of the simple fact that while preaching anti-waste he is keeping motor-cars in the names of young women.”

The car had stopped in front of a shop over whose door a pair of gilded animals like nothing in zoology were leaping amiably at each other.  Miss Winstock began to search neurotically in a bag for a handkerchief.

“This is the scene of my next appointment,” Mr. Prohack continued.  “Would you prefer to leave me at once or will you wait again?”

Miss Winstock hesitated.

“You had better wait,” Mr. Prohack decided.  “You’ll be crying in fifteen seconds and your handkerchief is sadly inadequate to the crisis.  Try a little self-control, and don’t let Carthew hypnotise you.  I shan’t be surprised if you’re gone when I come back.”

A commissionaire was now holding open the door of the car.

“Carthew,” said Mr. Prohack privily, after he had got out.  “Oblige me by imagining that during my absence the car is empty.”

Carthew quivered for a fraction of eternity, but was exceedingly quick to recover.

“Yes, sir.”

The shop was all waxed parquetry, silks, satins, pure linen and pure wool, diversified by a few walking-sticks and a cuff link or so.  Faced by a judge-like middle-aged authority in a frock-coat, Mr. Prohack suddenly lost the magisterial demeanour which he had exhibited to a defenceless girl in the car.  He comprehended in a flash that suits of clothes were a detail in the existence of an idle man and that neckties and similar supremacies alone mattered.

“I want a necktie,” he began gently.

“Certainly, sir,” said the judge.  But the judge’s eyes, fixed on Mr. Prohack’s neck, said:  “I should just think you did.”