"I am not," said Drayton, and felt that he had scored.
The other man's smile allowed him the point he made.
"Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall."
The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke.
Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister made notorious by his encounters with the Women's Franchise Union. Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons.
And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting to take her out of prison.
And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet.
"Anyhow," said the Cabinet Minister, "we've done them out of their Procession."
"What Procession?"
All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend he had in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of Miss Dorothea Harrison's release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as the papers had it.