“I asked you a question about my position, Mr. Steele,” said Mark.

“I haven’t time for this sort of thing,” said Steele. “If you haven’t any work to do, I have. I know nothing about your position.”

Mark thought, for a moment, of turning to Cosser; but Cosser’s smooth, freckled face and non-committal eyes suddenly filled him with such contempt that he turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him. He was going to see the Deputy Director.

At the door of Wither’s room he hesitated for a moment because he heard voices from within. But he was too angry to wait. He knocked and entered without noticing whether the knock had been answered.

“My dear boy,” said the Deputy Director, looking up but not quite fixing his eyes an Mark’s face, “I am delighted to see you.” As he heard these words Mark noticed that there was a third person in the room. It was a man called Stone whom he had met at dinner the day before yesterday. Stone was standing in front of Wither’s table rolling and unrolling a piece of blotting-paper with his fingers. His mouth was open, his eyes fixed on the Deputy Director.

“Delighted to see you,” repeated Wither. “All the more so because you-er-interrupted me in what I am afraid I must call a rather painful interview. As I was just saying to poor Mr. Stone when you came in, nothing is nearer to my heart than the wish that this great Institute should all work together like one family . . . the greatest unity of will and purpose, Mr. Stone, the freest mutual confidence . . . that is what I expect of my colleagues. But then as you may remind me, Mr.-ah-Studdock, even in family life there are occasionally strains and frictions and misunderstandings. And that is why, my dear boy, I am not at the moment quite at leisure-don’t go, Mr. Stone. I have a great deal more to say to you.”

“Perhaps I’d better come back later?” said Mark.

“Well, perhaps in all the circumstances . . . it is your feelings that I am considering, Mr. Stone . . . perhaps . . . the usual method of seeing me, Mr. Studdock, is to apply to my secretary and make an appointment. Not, you will understand, that I have the least wish to insist on any formalities or would be, other than pleased to see you whenever you looked in. It is the waste of your time that I am anxious to avoid.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mark. “I’ll go and see your secretary.”

The secretary’s office was next door. When one went in one found not the secretary himself but a number of subordinates who were cut off from their visitors behind a sort of counter, Mark made an appointment for ten o’clock to-morrow which was the earliest hour they could offer him. As he came out he ran into Fairy Hardcastle.

“Hullo, Studdock,” said the Fairy. “Hanging round the D.D.’s office? That won’t do, you know.”

“I have decided,” said Mark, “that I must either get my position definitely fixed once and for all or else leave the Institute.”

She looked at him with an ambiguous expression in which amusement seemed to predominate. Then she suddenly slipped her arm through his.

“Look, sonny,” she said, “you drop all that, see? It isn’t going to do you any good. You come along and have a talk with me.”

“There’s really nothing to talk about, Miss Hardcastle,” said Mark. “I’m quite clear in my mind. Either I get a real job here, or I go back to Bracton. That’s simple enough: I don’t even particularly mind which, so long as I know.”

To this the Fairy made no answer, and the steady pressure of her arm compelled Mark, unless he was prepared to struggle, to go with her along the passage. The intimacy and authority of her grip was ludicrously ambiguous, and would have fitted almost equally well the relations of policeman and prisoner, mistress and lover, nurse and child. Mark felt that he would look a fool if they met anyone.

She brought him to her own offices which were on the second floor. The outer office was full of what he had already learned to call Waips, the girls of the Women’s Auxiliary Institutional Police. The men of the force, though very much more numerous, were not so often met with indoors, but Waips were constantly seen flitting to and fro wherever Miss Hardcastle appeared. Far from sharing the masculine characteristics of their chief they were (as Feverstone once said) “feminine to the point of imbecility “-small and slight and fluffy and full of giggles. Miss Hardcastle behaved to them as if she were a man, and addressed them in tones of half breezy, half ferocious gallantry. “Cocktails, Dolly,” she bawled as they entered the outer office. When they reached the inner office she made Mark sit down but remained standing herself with her back to the fire and her legs wide apart. The drinks were brought and Dolly retired, closing the door behind her. Mark had grumblingly told his grievance on the way.

“Cut it all out, Studdock,” said Miss Hardcastle.

“And whatever you do, don’t go bothering the D.D. I told you before that you needn’t worry about all those little third-floor people provided you’ve got him on your side. Which you have at present. But you won’t have if you keep on going to him with complaints.”

“That might be very good advice, Miss Hardcastle,” said Mark, “if I were committed to staying here at all. But I’m not. And from what I’ve seen I don’t like the place. I’ve very nearly made up my mind to go home. Only I thought I’d just have a talk with him first, to make everything clear.”

“Making things clear is the one thing the D.D. can’t stand,” replied Miss Hardcastle. “That’s not how he runs the place. And mind you, he knows what he’s about. It works, sonny. You’ve no idea yet how well it works. As for leaving . . . you’re not superstitious, are you? I am. I don’t think it’s lucky to leave the N.I.C.E. You needn’t bother your head about all the Steeles and Cossers. That’s part of your apprenticeship. You’re being put through it at the moment, but if you hold on you’ll come out above them. All you’ve got to do is to sit tight. Not one of them is going to be left when we get going.”

“That’s just the sort of line Cosser took about Steele,” said Mark, “and it didn’t seem to do me much good when it came to the point.”

“Do you know, Studdock,” said Miss Hardcastle, “I’ve taken a fancy to you. And it’s just as well I have. Because if I hadn’t, I’d be disposed to resent that last remark.”

“I don’t mean to be offensive,” said Mark. “But-damn it all-look at it from my point of view.”

“No good, sonny,” said Miss Hardcastle, shaking her head. “You don’t know enough facts yet for your point of view to be worth sixpence. You haven’t yet realised what you’re in on. You’re being offered a chance of something far bigger than a seat in the cabinet. And there are only two alternatives, you know. Either to be in the N.I.C.E. or to be out of it. And I know better than you which is going to be most fun.”

“I do understand that,” said Mark. “But anything is better than being nominally in and having nothing to do. Give me a real place in the Sociological Department and I’ll . . .”

“Rats! That whole Department is going to be scrapped. It had to be there at the beginning for propaganda purposes. But they’re all going to be weeded out.”

“But what assurance have I that I’m going to be one of their successors?”

“You aren’t. They’re not going to have any successors. The real work has nothing to do with all these departments. The kind of sociology we’re interested in will be done by my people-the police.”

“Then where do I come in?”

“If you’ll trust me,” said the Fairy, putting down her empty glass and producing a cheroot, “I can put you on to a bit of your real work-what you were really brought here to do-straight away.”

“What’s that?”

“Alcasan,” said Miss Hardcastle between her teeth. She had started one of her interminable dry smokes. Then, glancing at Mark with a hint of contempt, “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”