re ten o'clock."

Sir John Dene's "den" was a room of untidiness and comfort. As
Dorothy said, he was responsible for the untidiness and she the
comfort.

"Heigh-ho!" she sighed, as she sank down into a comfortable chair.
"I wonder what Whitehall would have done without Mr. Sage;" she
smiled reminiscently. "He was the source of half its gossip."

"He was very kind to you, Dorothy, when John was--was lost," said
Mrs. West gently, referring to the time when Sir John Dene had
disappeared and a reward of 20,000 pounds had been offered for news
of him.

"Sure!" Sir John Dene acquiesced. "He's a white man, clean to the
bone."

"It was very wonderful that an accountant should become such a
clever detective," said Mrs. West. "It shows----" she paused.

"You see, he wasn't a success as an accountant," said Dorothy. "He
was always finding out little wangles that he wasn't supposed to see.
So when they wouldn't have him in the army, he went to the Ministry
of Supply and found out a great, big wangle, and Mr. Llewellyn John
was very pleased. You get me, Honest John?" she demanded, turning to
her husband.

Sir John Dene nodded and blew clouds of cigar smoke from his lips.
He liked nothing better than to sit listening to his wife's
reminiscences of Whitehall, despite the fact that he had heard most
of them before.

"Poor Mr. Sage," continued Dorothy, "nobody liked him, and he's got
such lovely down on his head, just like a baby," she added, with a
far-away look in her eyes.

"Perhaps no one understood him," suggested Mrs. West, with
instinctive charity for the Ishmaels of the world.

"Isn't that like her," cried Dorothy, "but this time she's right,"
she smiled across at her mother. "When a few thousand tons of copper
went astray, or someone ordered millions of shells the wrong size,
Mr. Sage got the wind up, and tried to find out all about it, and in
Whitehall such things weren't done."

"They tried to put it up on me," grumbled Sir John Dene, twirling
his cigar with his lips, "but I soon stopped their funny work."

"Everybody was too busy winning the war to bother about trifles,"
Dorothy continued. "The poor dears who looked after such things
found life quite difficult enough, with only two hours for lunch and
pretty secretaries to be----"

"Dorothy!" cried Mrs. West reproachfully.

"Well, it's true, mother," she protested.

It was true, as Malcolm Sage had discovered. "Let us concentrate on
what we know we _ha