had done on the twenty-third ultimo, but to the Poet the reply was
new and disconcerting.

"Where's my flat anyway?" he pursued doggedly.

"I have no statement to make," reiterated the Private Secretary.

After an awkward silence, during which neither yielded an inch
of ground, the Poet dragged his trunks destructively downstairs
and drove to the flat of the Official Receiver. Glowing with the
consciousness of victory, the Private Secretary dressed for dinner
and started out to his club. His good-humor was impaired, when he
observed in his hall a pendant triangle of wall-paper flapping in
the draught of the open door through which the Poet had dragged
his trunks. Further on, the paint was scarred on the stairs, and
the carpet of the main hall was rucked and disordered; there was
also a lingering suggestion of escaping gas, and the Secretary
observed a bracket hanging at a bibulous angle.

"This," he murmured through grimly set teeth, "is sheer frightfulness."

Returning to his rooms, he drawled a friendly warning by telephone
to the Millionaire, who instantly gave orders that no one of any
sex or age was to be admitted. Next he called up the Iron King and
repeated the warning; then the Lexicographer, the Official Receiver
and the Military Attache were similarly placed on their guard, and
there was nothing to do but to proceed to his belated dinner.

The Great War, which had converted staff officers into popular
preachers, novelists into strategical experts and everyone else