"Yes! Yes!" said de Bohun. "All right! Yes! The Home Office? Ah! Yes? Tell me the details," knitting his brows a little; then turning to his two cousins, "It seems they want me at Whitehall." _The Telephone_: "Hurry up, papa; it's all got to be fitted in pretty damn close, you know; they've got to get the man, and he's got to be got here by this afternoon, and got somehow!" _The Home Secretary_: "Ah? Yes!" Frowning, "Oh! that's serious--well! You want me at once? All right! It's Saturday afternoon you know! Is Morden there? Tell him I'll be up within the hour." Then he turned to his guests. "Yes, they want me at once, it seems. Most urgent. But they say it won't take long." He spoke into the receiver in his turn: "Do you think I can get back here by five or a little after in the car? ... Yes," turning round and nodding at his guests thoughtfully, "they say I can get back by five--or a little after, in the car. What a business it is! I have often wondered," he added sententiously as he hung up the receiver on its hook and rang the bell to order the car--"I have often wondered what makes men take office. It's a tradition," he sighed, "Some one must serve the State! But it's a weary business." All this for the benefit of his two cousins, as though they had been a public meeting. "I'll get back at once; my man can do it in forty minutes from here if he takes the cut by Muffler's Lane, and there's not much traffic after the first two hours of a Saturday afternoon." The car was round promptly enough. It was stopped within five miles for the great man to telephone back--from a local box--to Paulings for something he had forgotten to leave word of. But he did not telephone to Paulings. He telephoned to the Home Office, of which he was the chief. To such abasement do modern contrivances drive us. He called up the invaluable Morden and discovered to his enormous relief that the invaluable Morden, though it was a Saturday and already a quarter to four, was working away. Within twenty minutes more the great statesman was in his official palace of Whitehall. Morden was there all right, as the telephone had told him. Morden was there! Oh invaluable Morden! have you not earned those directorships and that sinecure in the Engrossing Department? By God! you have. "Morden," said the Home Secretary. "Aye, aye," answered Mr. Morden wittily. "You know Scotland Yard?" Morden did not turn a hair. Did he know Scotland Yard? Did he? He, Morden of the Home Office! The man who laid the traps for the scapegoats ... the man who worked the parks. So young--not forty--he had already seen pass before him a long troop of politicians, and he was ready to take any folly from them, short of physical violence. So when he was asked whether he, the junior brain of the Home Office, knew the place and institution called Scotland Yard, he said that he did; and he said it as naturally as though he had been asked for some information on Thibet.