One thing, however, had been overlooked. Ashmole-Brown’s contract—his famous contract—contained a renewal clause. The contract in its present form had but short time to run, and the question of its renewal was presently brought to Mr. Pylos’s attention by Miss Sadie Graine.

Pylos was busy with affairs of the less technically oriented when Miss Graine came in with Ashmole-Brown’s file. He waited for her to lay the papers on his In-tray and depart, but when she stood expectantly by the desk he knew that it was some matter to which she attached importance. Raising his head—not without some intrepid show of irritation—he invited, and received, the history of Ashmole-Brown. Miss Graine was at this time becoming more vocal, and she left no doubt as to the correct course to be followed. She would not, she explained, have bothered Pylos with the case had it not been for the rank of Ashmole-Brown. This—as Pylos saw from the cover of the file—though temporary, was substantial.

Alone again, Pylos laid aside the less technical and examined the dossier.

The Organization kept two sets of files on its personnel. One of these recorded the halting progress of the staff member on his Organizational journey and, as has been noted, was uncompromisingly official in character: this was known as the Personal File. The other, known as the Confidential File, contained only personal details and was available to an authorized few. (Nothing can describe the repugnance felt by the staff for the existence of these Confidential dossiers. They believed, not unreasonably, that secret files could only contain facts, or fictions, that exposed or defamed them, and the knowledge that an extensive system was devoted to the accumulation of such records caused distress of a natural and well-founded kind.)

Pylos found that he had been given both files on Ashmole-Brown, bound together with a rubber band. Neither was large, and few minutes were required to read them. Ashmole-Brown had come in with the century, had been educated at a college in the north of England, where he had written a thesis on the legend of Perceforest, and had since been employed at universities and in the government. During the war he had spent some time in the Royal Navy until invalided out for allergies. He had served on government committees. His hobby seemed to be linguistics, and his single publication was a pamphlet entitled “The Abuse of the Superlative in North America.” The only damaging item was a letter, in the Confidential file, in which a department store asked the Organization’s assistance in obtaining payment of a small account one year overdue.

Ashmole-Brown was respectable. But was he respectable enough to stand up for?—to stand up for (though Pylos did not say it, even to himself) against Miss Sadie Graine? What if Ashmole-Brown should be around for years, a perpetual testimony to Pylos’s administrative naïveté? If the name of Oxford or Cambridge had appeared in the file, Pylos would have taken heart on behalf of Ashmole-Brown. But Ashmole-Brown was not endorsed by either of these infallible bodies: his background was unmistakably red-brick in texture, and Pylos wavered.