John Dene of Toronto: A Comedy of Whitehall

by Herbert George Jenkins

Whilst Department Z. hummed and buzzed with energy, and men and women were coming and going continuously, Dorothy sat at the window of John Dene's room gazing out at a prospect of white enamelled bricks punctuated by windows. She had nothing to do. Everything seemed so different. John Dene's impulsive energy had vitalised all about him. Now she felt as if all her faculties had suddenly wilted.

In her own mind she was convinced that he was ill. She could not blot from her mind the strangeness of his manner during the last few days. His sudden loss of memory proved that he was unwell. For a man to forget where the postage stamps are kept, or the position in the room of the letter files, was, in itself, a proof that something very strange had suddenly come over him, the more so in the case of one who was almost aggressively proud of his memory. Then there had been other little details. His movements did not seem the same, that jerkiness and sudden upward glance from his table had disappeared. It was as if he had been drugged. Dorothy wondered if that really were the explanation. Oh! but she was very miserable and horribly lonely.

That night Dorothy and her mother sat up long after midnight talking of John Dene. To both had come the realisation that he stood to them in the light of an intimate friend.

As she said "Good night," Mrs. West put her arm round Dorothy's shoulders, and in a shaky voice said:

"I don't think God would let anything happen to a good man like Mr. Dene;" and Dorothy turned and left the room abruptly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HUE AND CRY

The late editions of the evening papers contained no mention of the disappearance of John Dene. For one thing much valuable time had been lost owing to the attitude of Sir Lyster Grayne, for another, Malcolm Sage had decided to make a great display in the morning papers. All that afternoon Department Z. was feverishly busy. Photographs of John Dene had to be duplicated, and the story distributed through the Press Bureau, in order that it might possess an official character.

On the morning following the discovery of John Dene's disappearance, the British public was startled at its breakfast-table by an offer of £10,000 reward for details that would lead to the discovery of the whereabouts of one John Dene, a citizen of Toronto, Canada, who had last been seen at 6 p.m. on the previous Monday outside his offices in Waterloo Place.