"Orderly," he called, "here, run after General Godwin—he's a bloke with a beak—and tell him I want him. Don't come back without him, d'ye hear?"
The man vanished, and a quarter of an hour afterwards the sound of galloping hoofs was heard, followed by advancing footsteps. Then the curtain was pushed aside, the long-nosed one entered, and stood at attention.
"I want you, Old Un," began Graeme, without preliminary, "as Chief of the Staff. Moleyns has given me notice. What d'ye say?"
Godwin hesitated.
"I suppose you think," continued Hector, eyeing him, "that if I go under over this, Moleyns being Quibble's boy, it's a poor look out for you. I ain't going under, though; you mark that, old bird."
"I wasn't thinking that at all, sir," was the answer, "my career's finished, in any case, by age."
"Do what I ask, and you shall be Commander-in-Chief when you get back."
"What about you then, sir?"
"Me? I've done with it after this. I'll pull them through now, and then home I go and speak out—tell the nation what sort of troops Quibble and his like send out to face the best soldiers in the world. I'll do what Roberts ought to have done when he had the chance in 1900, but wasn't man enough to take it. He told them afterwards when he was outed and had no further advancement to hope for; but no one would listen then, and rightly—he hadn't the weight of office behind him. 'Why didn't you speak then?' was a question he couldn't answer; 'we'd have believed you if you had; now you're one of us, and we won't. You're a nobody now.' But I'm rambling, what's your objection?"
"That Chief of the Staff, sir, is an appointment made by the Army Council. What if they cancel mine by wire?"