In fact, he was so delighted with Dr.Boomer and the Nigerian rubber tree and the shaded pictures and the charm of the whole place and the certainty that half a million dollars was easily findable in it, that he put his eyeglass back in his pocket and said.
"A charming club you have here, really most charming." "Yes," said Mr.Fyshe, in a casual tone, "a comfortable place, we like to think." But if he could have seen what was happening below in the kitchens of the Mausoleum Club, Mr.Fyshe would have realized that just then it was turning into a most uncomfortable place.
For the walking delegate with his hat on sideways, who had haunted it all day, was busy now among the assembled Chinese philosophers, writing down names and distributing strikers' cards of the International Union and assuring them that the "boys" of the Grand Palaver had all walked out at seven, and that all the "boys" of the Commercial and the Union and of every restaurant in town were out an hour ago.
And the philosophers were taking their cards and hanging up their waiters' coats and putting on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn sideways, and changing themselves by a wonderful transformation from respectable Chinese to slouching loafers of the lowest type.
But Mr.Fyshe, being in an alcove and not in the kitchens, saw nothing of these things.

Not even when the head waiter, shaking with apprehension, appeared with cocktails made by himself, in glasses that he himself had had to wipe, did Mr.Fyshe, absorbed in the easy urbanity of the Duke, notice that anything was amiss.
Neither did his guests.

For Dr.Boomer, having discovered that the Duke had visited Nigeria, was asking him his opinion of the famous Bimbaweh remains of the lower Niger.

The Duke confessed that he really hadn't noticed them, and the Doctor assured him that Strabo had indubitably mentioned them (he would show the Duke the very passage), and that they apparently lay, if his memory served him, about halfway between Oohat and Ohat; whether above Oohat and below Ohat or above Ohat and below Oohat he would not care to say for a certainty; for that the Duke must wait till the president had time to consult his library.
And the Duke was fascinated forthwith with the president's knowledge of Nigerian geography, and explained that he had once actually descended from below Timbuctoo to Oohat in a doolie manned only by four swats.
So presently, having drunk the cocktails, the party moved solemnly in a body from the alcove towards the private dining-room upstairs, still busily talking of the Bimbaweh remains, and the swats, and whether the doolie was, or was not, the original goatskin boat of the book of Genesis.
And when they entered the private dining-room with its snow-white table and cut glass and flowers (as arranged by a retreating philosopher now heading towards the Gaiety Theatre with his hat over his eyes), the Duke again exclaimed, "Really, you have a most comfortable club--delightful." So they sat down to dinner, over which Mr.Furlong offered up a grace as short as any that are known even to the Anglican clergy.

And the head waiter, now in deep distress--for he had been sending out telephone messages in vain to the Grand Palaver and the Continental, like the captain of a sinking ship--served oysters that he had opened himself and poured Rhine wine with a trembling hand.