But the remaining departments (and especially the “mushroom ministries”) might scheme as much as they liked,—­they could do nothing until the Treasury had approved their enterprises.  Modest Mr. Prohack was among the chief arbiters of destiny for them.  He had daily sat in a chair by himself and approved or disapproved according to his conscience and the rules of the Exchequer; and his fiats, in practice, had gone forth as the fiats of the Treasury.  Moreover he could not be bullied, for he was full of the sense that the whole constitution and moral force of the British Empire stood waiting to back him.  Scarcely known beyond the Treasury, within the Treasury he had acquired a reputation as “the terror of the departments.”  Several times irritated Ministers or their high subordinates had protested that the Treasury’s (Mr. Prohack’s) passion for rules, its demands for scientific evidence, and its sceptical disposition were losing the war.  Mr. Prohack had, in effect retorted:  “Departmentally considered, losing the war is a detail.”  He had retorted:  “Wild cats will not win the war.”  And he had retorted:  “I know nothing but my duty.”

In the end the war was not lost, and Mr. Prohack reckoned that he personally, by the exercise of courage in the face of grave danger, had saved to the country five hundred and forty-six millions of the country’s money.  At any rate he had exercised a real influence over the conduct of the war.  On one occasion, a chief being absent, he had had to answer a summons to the Inner Cabinet.  Of this occasion he had remarked to his excited wife:  “They were far more nervous than I was.”

Despite all this, the great public had never heard of him.  His portrait had never appeared in the illustrated papers.  His wife’s portrait, as “War-worker and wife of a great official,” had never appeared in the illustrated papers.  No character sketch of him had ever been printed.  His opinions on any subject had never been telephonically or otherwise demanded by the editors of up-to-date dailies.  His news-value indeed was absolutely nil.  In Who’s Who he had only four lines of space.

Mr. Prohack’s breakfast consisted of bacon, dry toast, coffee, marmalade, The Times and The Daily Picture.  The latter was full of brides and bridegrooms, football, enigmatic murder trials, young women in their fluffy underclothes, medicines, pugilists, cinema stars, the biggest pumpkin of the season, uplift, and inspired prophecy concerning horses and company shares; together with a few brief unillustrated notes about civil war in Ireland, famine in Central Europe, and the collapse of realms.

II

“Ah!  So I’ve caught you!” said his wife, coming brightly into the room.  She was a buxom woman of forty-three.  Her black hair was elaborately done for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir instead of a frock; it was Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered with flora, fauna, and grotesques.  She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction of his capricious tastes.