In the vast cream-and-blue office all the lamps were discreetly shaded
and cast a mild, steady light; the electric radiators exuded an even,
purified warmth. Lord Ottercove seemed to go on with his work
unencumbered, nay, stimulated by Frank’s presence. Frank would arrive at
any time after six o’clock in the evening, and the braided
commissionaire who confronted applicants with questionnaires would at
once call out to the lift boy: “Mr. Dickin to see his lordship.” And
Frank would be taken straight up, without relays on the way, and handed
by the original lift boy to the topmost page, who, without a second’s
hesitation, announced him to his master: “Mr. Dickin, m’lord,”
immediately followed by a “Show him in.” He would saunter in noiselessly
across the polished floor, Lord Ottercove taking no notice of him, and
lounge luxuriously in one of the enormous blue chairs, and dream. Now
visitors would be shown in, and Frank would listen, wonder and learn.
Learn of the enormous net of activities controlled by Lord Ottercove.
Now the page would announce that the editors of Lord Ottercove’s
newspapers whom he had called for a conference were on the landing, and
indeed one could already hear the shuffling of editorial feet. But Lord
Ottercove might be settling a point with Frank as to the relative value
of Buddha’s philosophy in the light of Einsteinian physics, or the
historic veracity of the Immaculate Conception, and he would call out to
the page: “Don’t let them in, unless it be over your dead body!” And the
page, flattered by the momentous responsibility thrust on his slender
shoulders, leaned zealously against the door behind which editorial feet
were still shuffling, till the great chief, the historic or philosophic
point settled, shouted: “Let ’em in!” They entered in a thin file, men
of assorted girths, sizes and physiognomies, and Lord Ottercove as he
beheld them would call out to Frank, with the leer of a Nero: “How do
you like them, Dickin? eh? Aren’t they a gang of bloody ruffians, what?”
while the editors with solemn mien and stately port settled round the
octangular table, Lord Ottercove among them but eminently presiding. And
now for matters of high policy! “Damn John Knox,” Lord Ottercove would
say. “These interminable Sunday articles about him! I am sick to death
of him. Let us have something new and fresh.” And gradually he would
expand into a living message and tell them what it was he wanted his
newspapers to say; his hands would rise, his fingers spread and come
together, till they held the extracted substance, the salt, the
Bovril-like quintessence of the meaning he wished to have conveyed to
the waiting world outside. Fascinated, his editors watched him,
fascinated and mesmerised, while he, like a conductor of orchestra,
played on their heart strings, till even the sulky and backward ones
melted.
They rose, the conference being over. Tired, he sat there, his hand on
his brow.
“To get them to pull in a team. Not so easy,” he said.
“I don’t think your staff likes me very much,” said Dickin. “They think
I have wormed myself into your heart and become an evil influence. A
sort of Rasputin.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ottercove. He rose, pressed the bell, ordered
dinner.
The butler sprang out of the floor, the octangular table was cleared of
papers and fittings. Chicken, caviare took their place. And champagne
bottles.
They sat down to dinner. The host, who had had the telephone placed at
his elbow, would every now and then take up the receiver and communicate
with the editors of his newspapers, or the editors would themselves
telephone to ask for instructions, when he would say: “I am supporting
the Air Force against the Admiralty. All you need know.”
“But last Friday when I had tea with you at your house you were
supporting the Admiralty against the Air Force,” Frank said.
“Getting too cocky,” Lord Ottercove explained.
“I suppose they are.”
“Besides, it doesn’t do for a newspaper proprietor to be one-sided. He
must steer the middle course.”
“I suppose he must.”
To be alone with a man who has wrecked more than one Ministry, and
register his sigh cumulative of a strenuous day’s work, to feel the
contact of power! By no means a negligible experience. Frank felt he
would like to incite Lord Ottercove to further action. But what action?
Something big, something shattering, something gigantic. Wreck the
Celestial Empire? Establish a Kingdom of Jewdom? a Negro Republic? Imbue
the Fascisti with Socialist sense?
His heart swelled at the thought and he looked at his host tenderly. “I
should like to write ... to describe ... all this....”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “and why not?”