He answered:
"Oh, yes you can. This is the place where women cry." He added: "Besides there's Mark. He's a comforting ass."
He delivered her over to Mark.
"Here, look after Miss Wannop," he said. "You want to talk to her anyhow, don't you?" and he hurried ahead of them like a fussy shopwalker into the lugubrious hall. He felt that, if he didn't come soon to an unemotional ass in red, green, blue or pink tabs, who would have fishlike eyes and would ask the sort of questions that fishes ask in tanks, he, too, must break down and cry. With relief! However, that was a place where men cried, too!
He got through at once by sheer weight of personality, down miles of corridors, into the presence of a quite intelligent, thin, dark person with scarlet tabs. That meant a superior staff affair: not dustbins.
The dark man said to him at once:
"Look here! What's the matter with the Command Depôts? You've been lecturing a lot of them. In economy. What are all these damn mutinies about? Is it the rotten old colonels in command?"
Tietjens said amiably:
"Look here! I'm not a beastly spy, you know? I've had hospitality from the rotten old colonels."
The dark man said: