It is unnecessary to give Mr Questing’s speech in detail. Indeed, it is almost enough to say that it was a tour de force of bad taste, and that its author, though by no means drunk, was, as Colly afterwards put it, ticking over very sweetly. He called Gaunt up to the platform and forced him to stand first on one foot and then on the other for a quarter of an hour. Mr Questing was, he said, returning thanks for a real intellectual treat but it very soon transpired that he was also using Gaunt as a kind of bait for possible visitors to the Springs. What was good enough for the famous Geoffrey Gaunt, he intimated, was good enough for anybody. Upon this one clear harp he played in divers keys while the party from Wai-ata-tapu grew clammy with shame. Dikon, filled with the liveliest apprehension, watched the glow of complacency die in his employer’s face to be succeeded by all the signs of extreme fury. ‘My God,’ Dikon thought, ‘he’s going to throw a temperament.’ Simultaneously, Barbara, with rising terror, observed the same phenomenon in her uncle.

Mr Questing, with a beaming face, at last drew to his insufferably fulsome conclusion, and the Mayor, who had obviously intended to make a speech himself, rose to his feet, faced the audience, and let out a stentorian bellow.

‘For-or…’ sang the Mayor encouragingly.

And the audience, freed from the bondage of Mr Questing’s oratory, thankfully proclaimed Gaunt as a jolly good fellow.

But the party was not yet at an end. Steaming trays of tea were brought in from outside, and formidable quantities of food.

Dikon hurried to his employer and discovered him to be in the third degree of temperament, breathing noisily through his nostrils and conversing with unnatural politeness. The last time Dikon had seen him in this condition had been at a rehearsal of the fight in Macbeth. The Macduff, a timid man whose skill with the claymore had not equalled that of his adversary, continually backed away from Gaunt’s onslaught and so incensed him that in the end, quite beside himself with fury, he dealt the fellow a swinging blow and chipped the point off his collarbone.

Gaunt completely ignored his secretary, accepted a cup of strong and milky tea, and stationed himself beside Barbara. There he was joined by Dr Ackrington, who, in a voice that trembled with fury, began to apologize, none too quietly, for Questing’s infamies. Dikon could not hear everything that Dr Ackrington said, but the word ‘horsewhipping’ came through very clearly several times. It struck him that he and Barbara, hovering anxiously behind these two angry men, were for all the world like a couple of seconds at a prize fight.