“I mean he hasn’t passed this door, sir,” said the official with quiet dignity, and Dolly went off considerably nettled, and looked into the tea-room and the libraries, and even wasted a little time in going round by the smoking-room. The policemen in the central hall had not seen Demaine, nay, a constituent with an exceedingly long black moustache and fierce eyes had been waiting by appointment with Demaine for two hours, and Demaine had not been found. The Prime Minister condescended so much as to speak to this man, and the man, not knowing whom he might be addressing, told him plainly that “if Mr. Demaine interpreted his duties in this fashion, he couldn’t answer for his seat, that was all!”
The Prime Minister further condescended to go out of the House in the ordinary way, and the policeman who guarded the ordinary portal had not seen Mr. Demaine.
It was really very awkward and exasperating, though it was only a detail. He must see Demaine that afternoon: it was imperative. But it was also important that he should see him as soon as possible. He wanted to keep him out of the way till he was coached.
There is nothing in this happy English life of ours more soothing to the brain in moments of anxiety, than the perusal of any one of those great Organs of Opinion which are the characteristic of our people and the envy of Europe, and of these it must be admitted none stand on quite the same intellectual and moral plane as the best two or three of our London evening papers. One of these the Prime Minister had always found particularly soothing. He bought it of the newsman at the corner of Parliament Square and opened it as he walked along at leisure towards Downing Street.
There was one corner of this sheet which was always a recreation to Dolly in the few moments he could spare from the House: it was the corner in which prizes were offered for the best pun, on condition of course that nothing coarse or personally offensive should be sent in by the competitors. To this he had turned an indifferent eye, when for the second time that day he received a shock which was almost like a blow in the face....
There, in great letters, with a flamboyance surely unworthy of a paper that professed to support his own Party, was the headline:
“DISAPPEARANCE OF A MINISTER ELECT.”
And his forebodings did not deceive him.... It was ... it was ... the permanently unlucky Demaine!
He cursed the crass imbecility by which such a thing could have got into the papers at all. He strode to his house and to his room, crumpled the paper which he was still holding, unfolded it, and then read the news again. There were but a few lines of it: Demaine had disappeared, and the full detective power of London was attempting to solve the mystery of his disappearance.
What madness to let such things get out!