The old farts from the Broadway Buildings climb out of those Rolls Royces and precede Waterhouse into the Mansion. In the library, the men cluster obsequiously round a telephone, which rings frequently and, when picked up, makes distant, tinny, shouting noises that can be heard, but not understood, from across the room. Waterhouse estimates that the Rolls-Royces must have driven up from London at an average speed of about nine thousand miles per hour.