“Awfully sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid I hadn’t heard of them.”

“Poppington’s latest,” I said curtly.

“I’m afraid I haven’t heard of Poppington either.”

I gave a sigh of desperation and leant back in my chair.

“Well, really!” I protested.  “Surely the man himself—­everybody—­I mean—­his—­his eye-glass—­his bulldog—­of course only a few of us fully appreciate the extent of his actual research work—­but still—­”

“All right, I’ll get it,” she replied.

That finished off Araminta easily enough, but the situation none the less was serious.  Paragraphs exactly like this had been meeting my eye in almost every popular paper for month after month, and, though I use two memory systems and have an electric scalp shampoo each week, I find them increasingly difficult to cope with. Who’s Which already transgresses the established canons of literary art.  It is almost as tall lying down as standing up, and fellows like Poppington are not even in Who’s Which.  He had not, you observed, even obtained an O.B.E.  What would happen if I met him at some public gathering or dinner and by some awful mischance forgot those salient facts?

It appeared to me that a process for reproducing short biographies of this nature in a slightly larger type on the shirt-fronts of eminent personages was badly needed; it should be coupled, I felt, with an arrangement of periscopes to help one when sitting beside the great man or standing behind his back.  Or he might perhaps wear upon his sleeve something like the divisional signs which were so useful in France.  Old Poppington, for instance, might have a—­might wear an—­I mean there might be something or other on his coat in red or green or blue to indicate the nature and scope of his secretarial activities and give a fellow the right lead.  And to think that every week dozens and dozens of new Poppingtons are springing up like crocuses about me!  It was a bewildering thought.  They were becoming perhaps the most numerous and influential class in the community.  I had visions of mass meetings of “well-known” men—­“well-known” men marching in procession with flags to Downing Street to demand State recognition, statues and pensions, and insisting that it should be made a penal offence not to recognise their well-known features in the street.  I made a great resolve.  Why should I be left out of it?  I determined to join the crowd.

I had got rather out of touch with old Marchand for some time, and had indeed forgotten exactly what he looked like, but I persuaded a mutual friend to point him out to me, and, selecting the psychological moment, cannoned into him heavily in the street.  His spectacles dropped off and his note-book fell out of his hand.

“Why, if it isn’t Du Beurre!” I shouted, feigning an ecstatic surprise.

“I am sorry,” he said rather stiffly, when he had recovered his breath, “but I am afraid I haven’t the pleasure—­”