"This is Lord Alperton. He's raising hell over that paragraph in this morning's column. Says he'll sue unless we print an immediate retraction. And he's demanding his lordship's home number as well as the managing director's. This..." she flourished the other grey instrument menacingly towards her employer, "is the Hon. Greville Slatt from Magdalene. Says he's being pressed by his bookie and unless you send him a cheque by return for the piece he gave us on those debs, who swam topless in the river, he reckons he'll be sent down. Do you care?"

Davis Troy dragged up a tubular steel chair and shuffled it alongside Bert West's so he could more comfortably join in the confusion around the diary table. It was invariably in a state of uproar but Bert, the Globe's diary editor, was utterly unmoved by the chaos which surrounded him. His secretary, Doreen, had two receivers off their hooks, one in each hand, and was waiting patiently, like a champion Persian at a tabby cat show, to discover if he would accept either of the calls.

Bert, who compiled the 'Harrington Drake' column, was seldom 'in'. He was either 'at editorial conference' or 'with the editor'. It depended largely on Doreen, and her remarkable economy of words in explaining a complicated problem of the moment sprang from a long, hard, rugged training as maidservant to the madhouse of gossip-writing.

Bert, drawing tensely on his thirtieth -- or maybe his fortieth -- Gauloise of the day, threw Troy an affected squint of anguish and signalled his Girl Friday to keep the mouthpieces covered. "Stall 'em, luv," he instructed. "The facts as printed on this particular lordship and the girl he's... ahem .. . promoting in show business are dead right. I mean, as usual, they came from his wife. And as for that Cambridge layabout -- he can go jump in the Cam. I sent him twenty quid last week for what turned out to be a dicey piece on one of his lecturers and a lion tamer's wife, a story that's caused me a hell of a lot of trouble with the lawyers --the parasitic sods. That boy must learn to reduce his bets or pick up better information. What he really needs to steady him up is a good woman three nights a week. How about it, Doreen?"

"I'm off sex," she retorted, "and anyway I hate men. The daily news flow across this desk is a caution to any girl with hot pants."

Doreen didn't twitch an eyelid as she said it. She'd heard it all before --on many days, in many ways. The perversions of the upper classes, the reversions of the middle set and the inversions of the rest. Today's 'phone calls were merely permutations on the age-old theme of human folly as commercialised by the Globe gossip team.

"It's not every day I get the chance of a natter with Our Golden Boy from New York," Bert continued, picking at his nails with a foot-long copy spike, a relic of the old days which he had refused to surrender to the management.

"How's things, Troy?"

Troy didn't answer at once. He was too interested in the techniques of the men beside him. Around the oblong table topped by some kind of green plastic that was even tougher than the gossip writers spread about it, the brains of the select and contentious élite who daily produced the Globe's most talked-about feature were at work collecting material for tomorrow's column... while Doreen explained that the kingpin of it all -- diary editor Bert -- was about his normal important business and therefore out.

"I will convey your message, sir," she said primly into each mouthpiece simultaneously, "and I have no doubt that Mr. West will call you back as soon as he returns."

"Like hell I will," muttered Bert, sipping filthy black canteen tea from a cracked cup. "If that old bastard wants to get a word with me he'll have to put a couple of FBI men on the back entrance. To hell with the terriers. How are you, Troy? --it's good to see you again. You've been doing a great job on the other side."

"It's so easy over there. The Americans love to talk and everybody likes the Press. After this country it's like robbing money boxes," confessed the Globe's New York correspondent.

"Your job is the tough one. It's a dirty job ... and everyone knows it's a dirty job ... yet it has to be done so long as the management wants it, and the public buys papers because of it. They sent me a copy of that last readership survey. The diary topped the popularity poll -- as usual. But I wouldn't be diary editor for ten thousand a year. I like to be loved just a little of the time."

"Don't kid yourself," Bert replied. "I do it because I like it, and it gives me the chance to cut down to size some of these affected, self-seeking sods with handles as long as a pedigree poodle's. The column's a great leveller, if you know how to use it, and much less messy than The Bomb. Anyway, who wants to talk about me -- and this? What's with you?"

"Well you know I get a month's home leave every two years -- courtesy of his lordship, travel and the works -- so I thought I had better come back and familiarise," said Troy.

"You can get right out of touch, working in America. When you're over there is seems like the centre of the world. And the newspapers, magazines and publicity media are like nothing we have in Europe. There's no grey... only black and white. Everything is pitched to the American Way, the American outlook, and you begin to view the rest of the earth in terms of Old Glory. England is a little bit of red, which means fairly friendly though not utterly reliable, on the left-hand side as you look towards Russia and China. Although I'm a devout European I sometimes find it difficult to keep a sense of proportion."

"But you enjoy America?"

"Of course I do. Just now it's a bit larger than life. Give them another twenty years to knock the edges off, and it will be the best place in the world to live. Today it's a bit too brash and brutal. But the sophistication of culture is coming. It needs a dose of something like socialism."

"Balls to socialism."

"Oh, I don't mean our version. We've probably gone too far in the other direction. Sometimes I think this country is nearer to true Communism than the Russians are. I mean here there is some sort of social and racial tolerance, the power and sway of the upper classes is just a memory, and no one can starve or be bankrupted in his old age because he happens to contract a long-drawn-out illness. You can't say the same about America. Or Russia, despite Karl Marx. Get a persistent bug in New York and the doctors will kill your bank account while curing you. When the New World learns to stop chasing its tail and to spend what it has... pleasantly ... then the country will have arrived. As it is, England is like a breath of fresh air."

"You like 9s. 6d. in the £? Surely the American idea -- every man for himself -- is the only way to get a country moving? No, don't answer that. I want to know about the things that matter. What's it like working over there ? Is there any chance of my getting there? Tell me, friend. I've always had an eye on the New York job."

"We'd love to have you," said Troy, conscious as he said it that the phrase was one which might have been used by any American, that he was well indoctrinated. "And I can think of no one better on the paper for the job. But first. . ."

Doreen interrupted him. She had been fighting off the telephones like a Scots Guardsman before fifty Arabs, but now at least one of them had become imperative.

"Yes, who is it?" asked Bert, testily. "Fred? All right, I'll take him."

He turned to Troy. "The fate of tomorrow's diary lead hangs on this call."

"Fred? Hello, Fred. What news? You're in, Fred? Good work, boy. We called on time, but he was difficult over the phone. Yes, like all of them. Has he coughed? The lot? Wonderful. Yes, if you want me to. Yes, put him on. I'll play the Elder Statesman."

His voice assumed a new, sombre note of sympathy.

"Ah yes, Lord Dorking. Well, these things happen, and it is our duty to the public to report them. Particularly when it concerns one so prominent and respected in English life."

He gave Troy a long wink.

"Well, sir, the ethics of journalism do not permit me to reveal my source, how we heard about -- er --this business. No, I'm afraid not, sir. But you can rest assured that we shall handle the story sympathetically. Of course, srir. No... I am afraid I cannot read it back to you before publication because the editor has laid down rules against that sort of thing. Nevertheless... Of course, sir. Thank you for your co-operation, and if we can help..."

He replaced the receiver jubilantly in its cradle. Then he hugged his chest.

"Worries over for today, me boyos," he called along the table. "Fred's put a half-nelson on Lord Dorking. He's in there now, and the old reprobate and his French tart are trotting out the works. Should make a good one.

"My wife ran off with a butcher so now I've bought myself a Frenchie, and all that..."

"I told you Fred was a good operator," said Doreen, reprovingly. "You've never let him out on a potential lead story before, and I said he was ready."

She was seldom wrong.

"I gave him time and I was right," retorted Bert, suddenly ten years younger now the great gaping space that was his ogre every day was suddenly half-filled. And with a good tale that would have the opposition busy at midnight when they saw the first editions of the Globe.

For a change the internal 'phone rang.

Bert took it. "Yes, who is it?"

"No -- it's not Davis Troy, but he's here. Hold on."

Troy accepted the receiver, mildly interested to note that the GPO had finally adopted the American Bell system telephone with its coiled lead which didn't knot like the old Postmaster General cord. It was high time.

"Davis Troy."

"This is Pauleen, the editor's secretary."

She made it sound like she was the Prime Minister's secretary calling from Ten Downing Street.

"Hello, Pauleen. What can I do for you?"

"The editor wants to see you in his office."

"I know. I 'phoned him when I landed. Friday, for lunch, isn't it? I'm on leave, you know."

"He wants to see you right away. Before the editorial conference. Someone saw you talking to Mr. West, so he knew that you were in. I shouldn't keep him waiting. The Express had a scoop this morning and it isn't one of his best days. His lordship has been on the 'phone."

"Do you know why he wants me ?"

"Yes, but I daren't tell you. Don't worry -- you are in the clear. He has a job for you. A really tricky one."

This girl sounded like the music hall comedian's idea of a hockey captain. Perhaps Roedean and Girton had been responsible. To a man fresh in from America the accent was all the more noticeable.

"But I'm on holiday."

"You were, Mr. Troy, and it's no use arguing with me. If you have any strong views on the subject you will have your opportunity. But don't forget he knows you are single and unattached. Come in now, and don't stretch your luck."

"As you command; my love."

He couldn't resist it. This girl took herself so seriously. When the Globe switched editors, as it did frequently, she would probably be consigned to the accounts department or somewhere equally grim. The law of the Fleet Street jungle applied also to secretaries.

Bert, expert eavesdropper, immediately guessed the import of the message. "Better not to keep him waiting," he counselled. "The Old Man's being kicked to death because the circulation is dropping and adverts are slow, and he's a swine these days. Tell you what -- we'll have lunch together. In the Cock, eh? On me? Say  12.45 ... that's a half-hour from now?"

"O.K. Providing he doesn't drag me off to one of his clubs."

The 'editor's lunch' was a standard ploy for firemen returnIng from foreign parts, and it could be that he had that in mind. "Unless, of course, he's going to fire me," Troy added,

"in which case I'll be most happy to join you."

"No strings then. Only let me know."

'Til do that."