“Mr. Surbonadier, sir.”

Arthur Surbonadier walked in.

Jacob Saint was sitting at his ultra-modern desk in his ultra-modern chair. A cubistic lamp lit up the tight rolls of fat at the back of his neck. His grey and white check jacket revealed the muscles of his back. His face was turned away from Surbonadier. Wreaths of cigar smoke rose above his pink head. The room smelt of cigar smoke and the scent he used — it was specially made for him, that scent, and none of his ladies — not even Janet Emerald — had ever been given a flask of it.

“Sit down, Arthur,” he rumbled. “Have a cigar; I’ll talk to you in a moment.”

Arthur Surbonadier sat down, refused the cigar, lit a cigarette, and fidgeted. Jacob Saint wrote, grunted, thumped a blotter and swung round in his steel chair.

He was like a cartoon of a theatre magnate. He was as if he played his own character, with his enormous red dewlaps, his coarse voice, his light blue eyes and his thick lips.

“What d’yer want, Arthur?” he said and waited.

“How are you, Uncle Jacob? Rheumatism better?”

“It isn’t rheumatism, it’s gout, and it’s bloody. What d’yer want?”

“It’s about the new show at the Unicorn. ” Surbonadier hesitated, and again Saint waited. “I–I don’t know if you’ve seen the change in the casting.”

“I have.”

“Oh!”

“Well?”

“Well,” said Surbonadier, with a desperate attempt at lightness, “do you approve of it, uncle?”

“I do.”

“I don’t.”

“What the hell does that matter?” asked Jacob Saint. Surbonadier’s heavy face whitened. He tried to act the part of himself dominant, himself in control of the stage. Mentally he fingered his weapon.

“Originally,” he said, “I was cast for Carruthers. I can play the part and play it well. Now it’s been given to Gardener — to Master Felix, whom everybody loves so much.”