Goldwasser picked up the internal phone. Evidently Chiddingfold had not yet done anything to disrupt the orderly sequence of events. Goldwasser waited, trying to work out from the noises whether the official party had actually reached the Political Department yet. He visualised the scene – Chiddingfold smiling his uneasy, treacherous smile, ushering the Queen with awkward, minimal gestures; Vulgurian trying to look alert and interested; all the Heads of Departments in unnaturally clean, stiff, tight collars, thinking all the time of what to do with their hands – putting them behind their backs, tucking one jauntily in a pocket, then thinking better of it and hastily pulling it out, folding them across their chests and then being struck by the weird unnaturalness of walking about like that. He saw the typical Research Assistant (Grade One) being wheeled forward, the typical computer being inspected, the typical question being asked. And in the midst of it he heard the telephone in the corner ring. Two hundred heads looked round, and then pretended not to have heard. The typical Research Assistant went on giving his typical answer through the noise of the telephone bell, until someone standing near the phone (Who? Rowe? Mrs. Plushkov? Some unknown laboratory technician? Nobbs, maybe?) collected his wits and answered it. And heard some madman (himself, Goldwasser!) start a desperate, garbled story about how he was locked in a room and about how Chiddingfold must be arrested at once. Goldwasser winced to hear inside his head the miserable embarrassment in the voice of the man who had answered the phone, as he tried to disengage himself and silence the awful interruption. He could see the frozen look on the faces of everyone around, as they tried to keep their minds on the royal appreciation of the department’s work, and strove not to hear their colleague’s awkward, sotto voce efforts. Goldwasser’s palms sweated. His whole frame yearned away from the phone. He could not do it.

He put the receiver back and tried to think about nothing. But any misery was more bearable than the misery of knowing one’s own cowardice. He would do it! But by now it must be too late; the official party must be already leaving for the Sport Department. He swore to himself that he would ring them there. He listened again, and sure enough, after a few minutes there came the muffled rumbling of two hundred people walking down a corridor. Not yet, not yet. Give them time to get right inside the department. Now! No, no – not while there were only the Queen and her immediate entourage in the empty laboratory. Wait. The true courage was the courage to wait. Perhaps now? But the rumbling was already dying away – the whole two hundred were now inside the Sport Department. It was too late; he could not bring himself to phone the whole two hundred.