III
In the afternoon Tommy had another interview arranged. This timewith a sad, grizzled man sitting in an office and obviously grudging¹ thetime he was giving Tommy.
‘Well, I really couldn’t say. Of course I know roughly what you’re talkingabout–lot of talk about it at the time–caused a big political blow-up–but Ireally have no information about that sort of thing, you know. No. Yousee, these things, they don’t last, do they? They soon pass out of one’s mindonce the Press gets hold of some other juicy scandal.’
He opened up slightly on a few of his own interesting moments in lifewhen something he’d never suspected came suddenly to light or his suspi-cions had suddenly been aroused by some very peculiar² event. He said:
‘Well, I’ve just got one thing might help. Here’s an address for you andI’ve made an appointment too. Nice chap. Knows everything. He’s thetops, you know, absolutely the tops. One of my daughters was a godchildof his. That’s why he’s awfully³ nice to me and will always do me a goodturn if possible. So I asked him if he would see you. I said there were somethings you wanted the top news about, I said what a good chap you wereand various things and he said yes, he’d heard of you already. Knew some-thing about you, and he said, Of course come along. Three forty-five, Ithink. Here’s the address. It’s an office in the City, I think. Ever met him?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Tommy, looking at the card and the address. ‘No.’
‘Well you wouldn’t think he knew anything, to look at him, I mean. Big,you know, and yellow.’
‘Oh,’ said Tommy, ‘big and yellow.’
It didn’t really convey much information to his mind.
‘He’s the tops,’ said Tommy’s grizzled friend, ‘absolute tops. You goalong there. He’ll be able to tell you something anyway. Good luck, oldchap.’

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