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if you don’t mind.”
    “Entirely a matter for you to decide, my dear fellow. Oh, and better come to the office to start with, and go on from here.”
    The dogs followed Stanley indifferently up the stairs.

CHAPTER 4
    T HE ULTIMATE breakdown of the Coloured Conference will no doubt be attributed by historians to the distrust by coloured peoples of Europeans which increased so much in the middle years of the twentieth century. That this distrust was felt by their governments rather than by the people themselves may find mention in the annals of the time.
    The futility of the whole venture will become in time apparent (an American observer summed it up as being, in his opinion, ‘a declaration of faith in arrested development ’), but at the time all this was masked by such considerations as a widespread feeling of goodwill towards the emerging coloured races, a mixed sense of guilt and fair play, and the necessity of securing valuable sources of raw materials even at the cost of actual friendship with the suppliers; an essentially unbusinesslike arrangement.
    ‘In a world growing daily smaller and smaller,’ announced the thinkers of the Western nations, ‘we cannot afford misunderstandings and ignorance. Whereas East was once East and West was West, the Asian and African are now our next door neighbours. The aeroplane, etc., etc….’
    The fact was that, brought thus airborne face to face, everyone’s worst suspicions were confirmed by closer acquaintance.
    The exact point at which the deterioration set in at the conference is uncertain, but the appearance of Stanley Windrush at Plantagenet House, in the entourage of the British Foreign Secretary, may well have struck the first discordant note.
    Just before ten o’clock, Stanley stood about despondently outside the great conference room. Despite the urgency of his summons there seemed little likelihood of there being anything much to do, and the lump on his forehead smarted. There was a good deal of glare from the gilding and the white paint, intensified as the dozen or so photographers, clustering round, flashed at the arriving delegates. One photographer with halitosis, representing an illustrated magazine, came close to Stanley and began gloomily talking.
    “Too much legwork and not enough legs,” he complained cryptically. “Never go in for this lark. What you done to your head? You know, they sent me to cover this but ten to one they won’t use it. It isn’t this stuff sells the paper, and no drinks on expenses eether. I don’t know. Cabaret at the Club Godiva, or girls on the swings when it’s a bit windy, that’s what they want. That’s what put the paper where it is. But Oo by Christ you pay for it.”
    “Really?” said Stanley. “That’s extraordinarily interesting . It costs you money?”
    “Eh? No, standing around all weathers. It gets you in the back. Best get one of Mr Mahommed coming in. Morning, sir! ” he called, raising his camera in an indifferent fashion to the leader of the Agyppian delegation.
    “Oh, so that’s Mr Mahommed,” said Stanley as the flash lit up a large smiling, muscular man, whose air of sparkling health seemed to burst through his dark grey suit.
    Mr Mahommed had genially shaken a number of hands on his way in, and now offered his hand to Stanley.
    “Mister…?”
    “Windrush,” said Stanley. “I believe you met my father.”
    “Ah, yes,” said Mr Mahommed. “It is so pleasant. He was looking very healthy, I remember. You yourself donot, if I may say so. Now perhaps you would come this evening when I am holding a cocktail party at six.”
    And Mr Mahommed, teeth glittering, passed into the conference room.
    “Suit yourself,” said the magazine photographer to Stanley. “I thought you might’ve been interested in going with me to Vespucci’s tonight, but Mr Mahommed might have some nude dancers laid on too, for all I know.”
    The day passed unsensationally. For the first hour or so there were