I explained that I was not McNeice. Then, in order to get him to go away, if possible, I added that I was not Malcolmson, or Cahoon, or Conroy, or the Dean.
“If you’ll pardon my curiosity,” he said, “I should like to ask—”
I saw that I should be obliged to tell him who I was in the end. I told him at once, adding that I was a person of no importance whatever, and that I had no views of any kind on what he would no doubt want to call “the situation.”
“May I ask you one question?” he said. “Is Lord Moyne going to take the chair to-morrow?”
“Yes,” I said, “he is. But if you’re going to print what I say in any paper I won’t speak another word.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “the wires are blocked. There’s a man in the post office writing as hard as he can and handing one sheet after another across the counter as quick as he can write them. Nobody else can send anything.”
“Clithering, I expect.”
“Very likely. Seems to fancy himself a bit, whoever he is. Nobody else can get a message through.”
He seemed an agreeable young man. Moyne had probably gone to bed and I did not want to spend a lonely evening.