“Ah: Indeed! Something important then?” (He had not heard of Somebody Else’s wife.)
Porritt looked up and winked knowingly. “Rather! You wait and see.” He lowered his voice, adding, confidentially: “There’s a move on.”
“Ah! The Big Push!”
His eyebrows shaped themselves into a question.
Porritt nodded gravely and impressively.
“The Big Push! The Big Push!” breathed the manager once more.
He murmured the words reverently and softly, and at once increased in stature a couple of inches, thus falsifying the spirit, if not the letter, of the Scriptural axiom. He was one of the Few who Knew. He was a personality.
He tangoed away for a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. Porritt grinned.
“You watch!” he said. “It’ll spread as quickly as a scandal in a cathedral city.”
And, really, the effect of this purely imaginary piece of news, deposited in the bosom of the manager, was electrical. He passed from table to table, and dropped a bomb on each. In five minutes the restaurant was seething with excitement.