‘My dear fellow! Do sit down. What am I thinking of. A cigar! A drink.’

‘No, thank you, George. I’ll smoke a cigarette. No, don’t move. I’ve got one.’

George gave him a wondering look, replaced his eyeglass and began to read again. As he did so his face went through as many changes of expression as those depicted in strip-advertisements. He was a rubicund man but the fresh colour drained out of his face. His mouth lost its firmness and his eyes their assurance. When he raised a sheet of manuscript it quivered in his grasp.

Once, before he had read to the end, he did speak. ‘But it’s not true,’ he said. ‘We’ve always known what happened. It was well known.’ He touched his lips with his fingers and read on to the end. When the last page had fallen on the others Colonel Cartarette gathered them up and put them into their envelope.

‘I’m damned sorry, George,’ he said. ‘God knows I didn’t want to land you with all this.’

‘I can’t see now, why you’ve done it. Why bring it to me? Why do anything but throw it at the back of the fire?’

Cartarette said sombrely: ‘I see you haven’t listened to me. I told you. I’ve thought it over very carefully. He’s left the decision with me and I’ve decided I must publish’ – he held up the long envelope –’this. I must, George. Any other course would be impossible.’

‘But have you thought what it will do to us? Have you thought? It – it’s unthinkable. You’re an old friend, Maurice. My father trusted you with this business because he thought of you as a friend. In a way,’ George added, struggling with an idea that was a little too big for him, ‘in a way he’s bequeathed you our destiny.’

‘A most unwelcome legacy if it were so but of course it’s not. You’re putting it altogether too high. I know, believe me, George, I know, how painful and distressing this will be to you all, but I think the public will take a more charitable view than you might suppose.’

‘And since when,’ George demanded with a greater command of rhetoric than might have been expected of him, ‘since when have the Lacklanders stood cap in hand, waiting upon the charity of the public?’

Colonel Cartarette’s response to this was a helpless gesture. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said; ‘but I’m afraid that that sentiment has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing.’

‘Don’t be so bloody supercilious.’

‘All right, George, all right.’

‘The more I think of this the worse it gets. Look here, Maurice, if for no other reason, in common decency …’

‘I’ve tried to take common decency as my criterion.’

‘It’ll kill my mother.’