'He's from Blackfriars, sir,' said Corporal Honeyman.

Captain Pile groaned. 'Not another? He doesn't need accommodation, I hope? I'm doing miracles as it is. The Ministry can't expect me to squeeze anyone else into the place. What's his line?'

'He seems to be a plastic surgeon, sir.'

Captain Pile looked horrified. The war had forced acquaintance with fellow-doctors in many outlandish specialities, but the company of professional face-lifters he felt outside the line of duty. 'I don't want to see him.'

'You made an appointment, sir. For two this afternoon.'

'Oh? Did I?'

'You'll remember the Ministry telephoned, sir. The gentleman has just joined the Emergency Medical Service.'

Captain Pile rummaged busily through the papers covering his broad desk, which commanded a fine view of the sweeping front drive. There was a fire flickering in the oversized marble grate and an overall glow of mahogany-and-leather Victorian comfort. It had been the office of the Smithers Botham medical superintendent, then a consultant psychiatrist in the Army, where he was, in time, to have greater influence and invoke more widespread exasperation than a good many generals.

'Where is this Trevose? In the hall?'

'Yes, sir. He would have come to see Annex D, sir.'

'Annex D,' observed Captain Pile sombrely. 'Very well, Corporal, I'd better have a word with him. You go back to your work.'

Corporal Honeyman withdrew to a small adjacent office to continue reading Lilliput, which he kept in a desk drawer with his bars of chocolate. He was a willowy young man with thinning, dandruff-laden hair, glasses in circular steel frames, and a battledress which chafed his long neck. He was a sight which depressed Captain Pile deeply. Corporal Honeyman had been a clerk in an estate agent's before joining the Army through love of his country and dislike of living with his mother. The Army found he could use a typewriter, and sent him to Smithers Botham. He felt he would have been tolerably happy there, had it not been for Captain Pile, whom he was coming to care for even less than his mother.