He had eaten too much. He pressed his huge belly again, wondering if the small pain in his right side was simple indigestion and his fat, white face flinched slightly as the pain increased. He would summon Dr. Chandler to the house.

He knew his secretary was at the House of Commons so he walked himself to the clerk’s room. One of the clerks, a weedy man named Bush, was coming through the far door. “Bush!”

“Sir?” Bush showed the fear that all the clerks felt of their master.

“Why are you away from your desk? Did you seek permission to wander through the land on my time? Is it your bladder again? Your bowels? Answer me, you beast of Belial! Why?”

Bush stuttered, “The door, sir. The door.”

“The door! I heard no bell! Correct me, Sillers,” he looked at the chief clerk, “but I heard no bell.”

“They knocked, sir.” Sillers dealt laconically with his master, yet never without respect.

“Who knocked? Strangers at my door, dealt with by Bush. Bush! Who was this lucky man?”

Bush stared in fear at the short, fat, grotesque man who stalked him. Sir Grenville Cony was grossly fat, his face had the appearance of a sly white frog. His hair, white after his fifty-seven years, was cherubically curly. He smiled on Bush, as he smiled on most of his victims.

“It was not a man, sir. A girl.”

“A girl!” Sir Grenville feigned surprise. “You’d like that, Bush, wouldn’t you? A girl, eh? Have you ever had one? Know what they feel like, eh? Do you? Do you?” He had backed Bush into a corner. “Who was this slut who has put you into such a fever, Bush?”

The other clerks, fourteen of them, smiled secretly. Bush licked his lips and brought the paper up to his face. “A Dorcas Slythe, sir.”

“Who?” Cony’s voice had changed utterly. No longer flippant and careless, but suddenly hard as steel, the voice that could ride down committees in Parliament and silence courtrooms. “Slythe? What was her business.”

“A Covenant, sir. St. Matthew.” Bush was quaking.

Sir Grenville Cony was very still, his voice very quiet. “What did you tell her, Bush?”

“To come back next Wednesday, sir.” He shook his head and added in desperation, “They were your instructions, sir!”

“My instructions! Mine! My instructions are for you to deal intelligently with my business. God! You fool! You fool! Grimmett!” His voice had been rising, till his final call became a shrill scream.

“Sir?” Thomas Grimmett, chief of Grenville Cony’s guards, came through the door. He was a big man, hard-faced, utterly fearless in his master’s presence.

“This Bush, Grimmett, this fool, is to be punished.” Cony ignored the clerk’s whimpers. “Then he is to be thrown out of my employment. Do you understand?”

Grimmett nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Sillers! Come here!” Sir Grenville Cony stalked back into his room. “Fetch the papers on Slythe. We have work, Sillers, work.”

“You have the Scottish Commissioners to see, sir.”