Page:The council of seven.djvu/201

 the aurea mediocritas—for the magnate himself happened to be the prime minister.

There is no need, at any rate, in these pages, to decorate him with the pomp of capital letters. The prime minister of Britain was a supine and ignoble figure in the view of many. Wilberforce Williams by name, he was generally known as "Slippery Sam," because, as his fervent admirers claimed, "you never knew when you 'ad him."

Nobody knew exactly how, when or why Slippery Sam had made his way to his present eminence. Nobody cared. But there he was on the front bench with his boots cocked up on the table in front of him, master of all he surveyed, with a whole set of blank coupons, two books full, in his pocket. There he was and if possible there he meant to stay.

On principle the prime minister listened to John Endor. It may seem a little odd that such a man as Mr. Williams should have had a principle to indulge; certainly it was not at the call of mere duty or at the beck of truth that he now listened to this young man who took himself and his country so seriously. But Mr. Williams was a little intrigued by him, in the way he was a little intrigued by so many things. For, like other prime ministers before him, he was by way of being an amateur of the human comedy. Therefore, he knew the authentic note when he heard it.

Nobody, not even the Colossus himself, had penetrated to the fact that, in point of sheer cleverness,