'It affects training,' he said, 'particularly.' He meant policy did. 'People are being hustled into sensitive areas without preliminary experience even in minor operations. I'm not talking — ' he looked at me quickly — 'about this unfortunate debacle in Gaza.'
'No.' He was.
In his dead eyes I could see two red sparks, the reflections of the little electric fire with its cracked insulators that was perched on a pile of split-spined encyclopaedias near my chair. 'To a limited degree we can resist these dangerous changes in policy — or at least avert some of their dangerous results.'
When the telephone rang he didn't look at it for a moment, as if deciding not to answer it. Then be picked up the receiver, the ointment gleaming on his knuckles.
'Yes?' All I could hear was a name — Gilchrist — from the speaker, but Egerton was saying sharply: 'Couldn't they?' He tilted his narrow head back as he listened, his eyes cast down. 'I'll go and talk to his wife. Don't let her get the news from anyone else. Warn Matthews particularly; they were close friends.' He put the receiver down and said with slight irritation: 'They shouldn't get married; it's inconsiderate. Where was I?'
A small cracked 250-watt fire like this would never get the chill out of Egerton's room. I thought they must have been after something pretty serious to throw in a man like Gilchrist. I'd never liked him but he'd been first class. So had Lovett, only last year in Hanover. I'd liked Lovett. We seemed to be getting a bit too cheap.