“He said it was urgent, sir.”

Scowling, Edward Henry rose.  “Excuse me,” he said.  “I won’t be a moment.  Help yourselves to the liqueurs.  You chaps can go, I fancy.”  The last remark was addressed to the gentlemen-in-waiting.

The next room was the vast bedroom with two beds in it.  Edward Henry closed the door carefully, and drew the portiere across it.  Then he listened.  No sound penetrated from the scene of the supper.

“There is a telephone in this room, isn’t there?” he said to Joseph.  “Oh, yes, there it is!  Well, you can go.”

“Yes, sir.”

Edward Henry sat down on one of the beds by the hook on which hung the telephone.  And he cogitated upon the characteristics of certain members of the party which he had just left.  “I’m a ‘virgin mind,’ am I?” he thought.  “I’m a ‘clean slate’?  Well!...  Their notion of business is to begin by discussing the name of the theatre!  And they haven’t even taken up the option!  Ye gods!  ‘Intellectual’!  ‘Muses’!  ‘The Orient Pearl.’  And she’s fifty—­that I swear!  Not a word yet of real business—­not one word!  He may be a poet.  I daresay he is.  He’s a conceited ass.  Why, even Bryany was better than that lot.  Only Sachs turned Bryany out.  I like Sachs.  But he won’t open his mouth....  ‘Capitalist’!  Well, they spoilt my appetite, and I hate champagne!...  The poet hates money....  No, he ‘hates the thought of money.’  And she’s changing her mind the whole blessed time!  A month ago she’d have gone over to Pilgrim, and the poet too, like a house-a-fire!...Photographed indeed!  The bally photographer will be here in a minute!...  They take me for a fool!...  Or don’t they know any better?...  Anyhow, I am a fool....  I must teach ’em summat!”

He seized the telephone.

“Hello!” he said into it.  “I want you to put me on to the drawing-room of Suite No. 48, please.  Who?  Oh, me!  I’m in the bedroom of Suite No. 48.  Machin, Alderman Machin.  Thanks.  That’s all right.”

He waited.  Then he heard Harrier’s Kensingtonian voice in the telephone asking who he was.

“Is that Mr. Machin’s room?” he continued, imitating with a broad farcical effect the acute Kensingtonianism of Mr. Marrier’s tones.  “Is Miss Ra-ose Euclid there?  Oh!  She is!  Well, you tell her that Sir John Pilgrim’s private secretary wishes to speak to her?  Thanks.  All right. I’ll hold the line.”

A pause.  Then he heard Rose’s voice in the telephone, and he resumed: 

“Miss Euclid?  Yes.  Sir John Pilgrim.  I beg pardon!  Banks?  Oh, Banks!  No, I’m not Banks.  I suppose you mean my predecessor.  He’s left.  Left last week.  No, I don’t know why.  Sir John instructs me to ask if you and Mr. Trent could lunch with him to-morrow at wun-thirty?  What?  Oh! at his house.  Yes.  I mean flat.  Flat!  I said flat.  You think you could?”

Pause.  He could hear her calling to Carlo Trent.