After a wait of some minutes in an ante-room where were collecting a large number of officers and others on errands of various natures, I was sent away in charge of a boy-scout, with about ten other form-fillers, whom he dropped at various floor lodges on the way. The system was for each boy-scout to conduct a whole bunch of followers, who carried their forms in their hands until the desired floors were reached, when the boy-scout guide handed one or more of his followers to the commissionaire in charge of the lodge on each floor sought, who in turn sent them off again in charge of another attendant to the desired room.
I was the last one to depart from our diminutive guide. But when I got to the lodge on the floor on which the room I was seeking was numbered, the commissionaire in charge said he knew nothing of the officer named on my form. After arguing the matter discreetly with him I persuaded him to take me to the room specified on my form, which we found unoccupied, although there were a table and chairs there, as I saw them through the half-open door.
As the bona fides of my quest seemed to be doubted I produced the letter I had received, when he politely escorted me to two other lodges on the other floors; but only one of the men in charge could help me at all, and in that he was very vague. He believed there had been an officer, whose name he did not know, using the room so numbered or another room a day or so ago, and he was not certain which it was; he had since changed his room, but where he could not say. Anyway, as he expressed himself, he was a mysterious kind of person, and what he did, or what functions he performed, no one seemed to know. I must confess I was at a loss to understand the position. Suddenly, however, the thought struck me that it might be a possible stunt to test one's capabilities for a research or investigation; so I listened with interest to the conversations of the various commissionaires and gleaned that the gentleman I sought, if such an individual had any business in the War Office at all, was tall, thin, and aristocratic. The one man who described him thought he knew whom I meant--"A horficer as spent his time a-dodging back'ards and forrards betwixt the War Hoffice and the Hadmiralty, who never said nothink to nobody, so one didn't know which he did belong to; one who 'ardly ever was in 'is room and one who 'ad some queer blokes come to see 'im."