§ 6
The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves listened gravely to their inquiries, making no instant reply. He belonged to that great majority of English speakers who are engaged upon the improvement of the word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long and purry.
“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: “Yurrss. There was a small gentleman without a ’at on. Yurrss. He ’ad blue eyes. And a moustache? Yurrss, come to think of it there was a moustache. A rather considerable moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to King George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a rather urgent matter. Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We replied, according to formula, ’e’d ’ave to write for’n ’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who I am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ I says. ‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. But ’e was ’ere last week and ’e wouldn’ go away and they ’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You know there was a chap ’ere, sir—Thursday last or Friday, I forget which—with a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very like ’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed your gentleman. He kind of mumbled a name.”
“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta.
“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I says. ‘Not even if you was a close relation. We got no option here. We’re just machines.’ He stood sort of looking baffled for a time. ‘All this must be altered,’ he said in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty of every king to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to ’elp it,’ I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind of tipped the wink to the detective at the corner and ’e watched ’im go along the front and then cross over to the monument and stand looking up at the windows. And then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And that’s the last I see of ’im.”
Lambone asked a superfluous question.
“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it might be down towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I didn’t notice.”
It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end.