It was unnecessary to mention a name. Nigel Stewart’s habits were proverbial.
“Read my article?” asked Townsend.
“Splendid,” Michael murmured.
“It’s going to get me the Librarianship of the Union,” Townsend earnestly assured Michael.
Michael was about to congratulate the sanguine author without disclosing his ignorance of the article’s inside, when Bill Mowbray rushed breathlessly into the room. Everybody observed his dramatic entrance, whereupon he turned round and rushed out again, pausing only for one moment to exclaim in the doorway:
“Good god, that fool will never remember!”
“See that?” asked Townsend darkly, as the Tory Democrat vanished.
Michael admitted that he undoubtedly had.
“Bill Mowbray has become a poseur,” Townsend declared. “Or else he knows his ridiculous article on Toryism was too badly stashed by mine,” he added.
“We shan’t see him again to-night,” Michael prophesied.