public officials we shall
have all Kent in tatters," said Cossar. "Now is there--anything? _No!
HI_!"

He stretched a vast hand towards a cab that became convulsively eager to
serve him ("Cab, Sir?" said the cabman. "Obviously," said Cossar); and
Bensington, still hatless, paddled down the steps and prepared to mount.

"I _think_," he said, with his hand on the cab apron, and a sudden
glance up at the windows of his flat, "I _ought_ to tell my cousin
Jane--"

"More time to tell her when you come back," said Cossar, thrusting him
in with a vast hand expanded over his back....

"Clever chaps," remarked Cossar, "but no initiative whatever. Cousin
Jane indeed! I know her. Rot, these Cousin Janes! Country infested with
'em. I suppose I shall have to spend the whole blessed night, seeing
they do what they know perfectly well they ought to do all along. I
wonder if it's Research makes 'em like that or Cousin Jane or what?"

He dismissed this obscure problem, meditated for a space upon his watch,
and decided there would be just time to drop into a restaurant and get
some lunch before he hunted up the plaster of Paris and took it to
Charing Cross.

The train started at five minutes past three, and he arrived at Charing
Cross at a quarter to three, to find Bensington in heated argument
between two policemen and his van-driver outside, and Redwood in the
luggage office involved in some technical obscurity about this
ammunition. Everybody was pretending not to know anything or to have any
authority, in the way dear to South-Eastern officials when they catch
you in a hurry.

"Pity they can't shoot all these officials and get a new lot," remarked
Cossar with a sigh. But the time was too limited for anything
fundamental, and so he swept through these minor controversies,
disinterred what may or may not have been the station-master from some
obscure hiding-place, walked about the premises holding him and giving
orders in his name, and was out of the station with everybody and
everything aboard before that official was fully awake to the breaches
in the most sacred routines and regulations that were being committed.

"Who _was_ he?" said the high official, caressing the arm Cossar had
gripped, and smiling with knit brows.

"'E was a gentleman, Sir," said a porter, "anyhow. 'Im and all 'is party
travelled first class."

"Well, we got him and his stuff off pretty sharp--whoever he was," said
the high official, rubbing his arm