"That is some notion," he cried. "You're right. Road-hogging is rotten bad form. We'll run this little lad down to Brooklands—oh, so gently!—and then go round the track all out. Will you come with me?"
"Rather," replied the primeval Philip with great heartiness.
"And come and dine at the Club afterwards," added Timothy, in a final burst of friendliness.
Within the exaggerated saucer constructed for the purpose at Brooklands they succeeded in covering seventy-three miles in sixty minutes, Timothy deliriously clinging to the wheel and Philip sitting watchfully beside him to see that centrifugal force did not send the new car flying over the rim into the conveniently adjacent cemetery of Brookwood.
Thereafter they dined together at the Royal Automobile Club, which seemed to Philip to contain several thousand members. Members swarmed in the great central hall, upon the staircase, and in all the lofty apartments opening therefrom. There appeared to be at least six hall-porters, and there were page-boys innumerable, who drifted about in all directions wearing worried expressions and chanting a mysterious dirge which sounded like "Mr. Hah-Hah, please!" There was a real post-office in one corner, and a theatre ticket-office in another. There were racquet courts, and a swimming-bath, and a shooting-gallery, and a gymnasium, and a bowling-alley, and a fencing-school. Timothy confidently announced that there was a golf links somewhere, but that he had not yet found time to play a round owing to the excessive length of the holes.
Eschewing what Philip's host described as the "cock-and-hen" dining-room (where the two sexes could be seen convivially intermingled, partaking of nourishment to the sound of music), they ascended in a lift to the first floor, where they sat down in a vast refectory of a more monastic type. Here one gentleman greeted them at the door, while a second took Timothy's order for dinner, and passed it on to a third. The dishes were served by a fourth and cleared away by a fifth. The same ceremony was observed in the ordering of wine.
"Less fuss up here than downstairs," explained Timothy.
Philip enjoyed his meal immensely, though he wondered, characteristically, if all these ministers to his comfort—especially the page-boys—had partaken, or would partake, of an adequate meal themselves. Timothy, who contracted friendships almost as impulsively as he purchased motors, chattered to him with all the splendid buoyancy and frankness of youth. His vocation in life, it appeared, was that of Assistant Private Secretary to a prominent member of His Majesty's Opposition. The post was unpaid, and the duties apparently nominal. But Timothy was quite a mine of totally unreliable information upon the secret political history of the day. He told Philip some surprising stories of the private lives of Cabinet Ministers, and foretold the date of the next general election with great assurance and exactitude.
Later in the evening, as they drank coffee and liqueurs in an apartment which reminded Philip of Victoria Station (as recently rebuilt), Mr. Rendle conducted his guest through a résumé of several love-affairs—highly innocuous intrigues, most of them—and added the information that "that sort of thing" was now "cut out" owing to the gracious and elevating influence of a being only recently encountered, whom he described as "the best little girl that ever stepped."
"I don't know her very well yet," he concluded, in a burst of candour. "In fact, I don't even know what her name is. I met her at a dance. All I could find on my programme next morning was 'tight pink head-band.' But I will find her again."