“Oh!” exclaimed Miss Winstock, “the boy who drove off in Lady Massulam’s car?”

“Was that Lady Massulam?” asked Mr. Prohack before he had had time to recover from the immense effect of hearing the startling, almost legendary name of Lady Massulam in connection with his son.

“Of course,” said Miss Winstock.  “Didn’t you know?”

Mr. Prohack ignored her pertness.

“Well,” he proceeded, having now successfully concealed his emotion, “after having dealt as I suggest with my wife and children, you will deal with my affairs.  You shall have the same salary as Mr. Carrel Quire paid—­or forgot to pay.  Do you agree or not?”

“I should love it,” replied Miss Winstock with enthusiasm.

“What is your Christian name?”

“Mimi.”

“So it is.  I remember now.  Well, it won’t do at all.  Never mention it again, please.”

When he had accompanied Mimi to a neighbouring post office and sent off a suitable telegram of farewell to Mr. Carrel Quire in her name, Mr. Prohack abandoned her till the morrow, and drove off quickly to pick up his wife for the Grand Babylon lunch.

“I am a perfect lunatic,” said he to himself.  “It must be the effect of riches.  However, I don’t care.”

He meant that he didn’t care about the conceivable consequences of engaging Mimi Winstock as secretary.  But what he did care about was the conjuncture of Lady Massulam and Charlie.

CHAPTER XIII

FURTHER IDLENESS

I

Strange, inconceivable as it may appear to people of the great world and readers of newspapers, Mr. Prohack, C.B., had never in his life before been inside the Grand Babylon Hotel.  Such may be the narrow and mean existence forced by circumstances upon secretly powerful servants of the Crown.  He arrived late, owing to the intricate preparations of his wife and daughter for Charlie’s luncheon.  These two were unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous, and their nervousness reacted upon Mr. Prohack, who perceived with disgust that his gay and mischievous mood of the morning was slipping away from him despite his efforts to retain it.  He knew now definitely that his health had taken the right turn, and yet he could not prod the youthful Sissie as he had prodded the youthful Mimi Winstock.  Moreover Mimi was a secret which would have to be divulged, and this secret not only weighed heavy within him, but seemed disturbingly to counterbalance the secrets that Charlie was withholding.

On the present occasion he saw little of the Grand Babylon, for as soon as he mentioned his son’s name to the nonchalant official behind the enquiry counter the official changed like lightning into an obsequious courtier, and Charles’s family was put in charge of a hovering attendant boy, who escorted it in a lift and along a mile of corridors, and Charlie’s family was kept waiting at a door until the voice of Charlie permitted the boy to open the door.  A rather large parlour set with a table for five; a magnificent view from the window of a huge white-bricked wall and scores of chimney pots and electric wires, and a moving grey sky above!  Charlie, too, was unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous.