that won't be reeking with the stuff." I was aghast.
"Shall I go and see the Director-General, A.M.S., about it, sir?"

"Yes, do, by all means. The very thing."

He came back presently. "I've seen the D.-G., sir, and he's
frightfully excited. He's got hold of all his deputies and hangers-on,
and the whole gang of them are talking as if they were wound up. One
of them says he thinks he has heard of an antidote, but of course he
knows nothing whatever about it really, and is only talking through
his hat, I tell you what, sir, we ought to lend them a hand in this
business. I know Professor Stingo; he's miles and away the biggest man
on smells and that sort of thing in London, if not in Europe. So, if
you'll let me, I'll charter a taxi and be off and hunt him up, and get
him to work. If the thing can be done, sir, he's the lad for the job.
May I go, sir?"

"Very well, do as you propose, and let me know the result."

He turned up again in the afternoon. "I've seen old man Stingo, sir,
and he's for it all right. He's going to collect a lot more sportsmen
of the same kidney, and they're going to have the time of their lives,
and to make a regular night of it. You see, sir, I pointed out to him
that this was a matter of the utmost urgency--not merely a question of
finding an antidote, but also of distributing it methodically and
broadcast. After it's been invented or made or procured, or whatever's
got to be done, some comedian in the Quartermaster-General's show will
insist on the result being packed up in receptacles warranted
rot-proof against everything that the mind of man can conceive till
the Day of Judgment--you know the absurd way those sort of people go
on, sir--and all that will take ages, aeons." He really thought of
everything. "And there'll have to be books of instructions and
classes, and the Lord knows what besides! After that the stuff'll have
to be carted off to France and the Dardanelles, and maybe to Archangel
and Mesopotamia; so Stingo and Co. are going to be up all night, and
mean to arrive at some result or to perish in the attempt. And now,
sir, what have you done about it at the Foreign Office?"

This was disconcerting, seeing that I had done nothing.

"Oh, but, sir," sounding that note of submissive expostulation which
the tactful staff-officer contrives to introduce when he feels himself
obliged reluctantly to express disapproval of superior military
authority, "oughtn't we to do something? How