"You didn't!" Macmaster said with an expression of panic. "Besides, they didn't ask you to fake the calculation. They only asked you to work it out on the basis of given figures."
"Anyhow," Tietjens said, "I gave him a bit of my mind. I told him that, at threepence, it must run the country—and certainly himself as a politician!—to absolute ruin."
Macmaster uttered a deep "Good Lord!" and then: "But won't you ever remember you're a Government servant. He could . . ."
"Mr. Waterhouse," Tietjens said, "asked me if I wouldn't consent to be transferred to his secretary's department. And when I said: "Go to hell!" he walked round the streets with me for two hours arguing. . . . I was working out the chances on a 4½d. basis for him when you interrupted me. I've promised to let him have the figures when he goes by up the 1.30 on Monday."
Macmaster said:
"You haven't. . . . But by Jove you're the only man in England that could do it."
"That was what Mr. Waterhouse said," Tietjens commented. "He said old Ingleby had told him so."
"I do hope," Macmaster said, "that you answered him politely!"
"I told him," Tietjens answered, "that there were a dozen men who could do it as well as I, and I mentioned your name in particular."
"But I couldn't," Macmaster answered. "Of course I could convert a 3d. rate into 4½d. But these are the actuarial variations; they're infinite. I couldn't touch them."