HANNO: Waiter! Get me a copy of The Times. [Mutters to himself. The waiter brings the copy of The Times. As he gives it to Hanno he collides with another member of the Club, and that member, already advanced in years, treads upon Hanno’s foot.] Hanno: Ah! Ah! Ah!... Oh! [with a grunt]. Bethaal, it’s you, is it?
Bethaal: Gouty?
Hanno [after saying nothing for some time]: ’Xtraordinary thing.... Nothing in the papers.
Bethaal: Nothing odd about that! [He laughs rather loudly, and Hanno, who wishes he had said the witty thing, smirks gently without enthusiasm. Then he proceeds on another track.] I find plenty in the papers! [He puffs like a grampus.]
Hanno: Plenty about yourself!... That’s the only good of politics, and precious little good either.... What I can’t conceive—as you do happen to be the in’s and not the out’s—is why you don’t send more men from somewhere; he has asked for them often enough.
Bethaal [wisely]: They’re all against it; couldn’t get anyone to agree but little Schem [laughs loudly]; he’d agree to anything.
[69]Hanno [wagging his head sagely]: He’ll be Suffete, my boy! He’ll be a Sephad all right! He’s my sister’s own boy.
Bethaal [surlily]: Shouldn’t wonder! All you Hannos get the pickings.
Hanno: You talk like a book.... Anyhow, what about the reinforcements?—that does interest me.
Bethaal [wearily]: Oh, really. I’ve heard about it until I’m tired. It isn’t the reinforcements that are wanted really; it’s money, and plenty of it. That’s what it is. [He looks about the room in search for a word.] That’s what it is. [He continues to look about the room.] That’s what it is ... er ... really. [Having found the word Bethaal is content, and Hanno remains silent for a few minutes, then:]
Hanno: He doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Bethaal [jumping up suddenly with surprising vigour for a man of close on seventy, and sticking his hands into his pockets, if Carthaginians had pockets]: That’s it! That’s exactly it! That’s what I say, What Hannibal really wants is money. He’s got the men right enough. The men are splendid, but all those putrid little Italian towns are asking to be bribed, and I can’t get the money out of Mohesh.
Hanno [really interested]: Yes, now? Mohesh has got the old tradition, and I do believe it’s the sound one. Our money is as important to us as our Fleet, I mean our credit’s as important to us as our Fleet, and he’s perfectly right is Mohesh.... [Firmly][70] I wouldn’t let you have a penny if I were at the Treasury.
Bethaal [surlily]: Well, he’s bound to take Rome at last anyway, so I don’t suppose it matters whether he has the money or not; but it makes me look like a fool. When everything was going well I didn’t care, but I do care now. [He holds up in succession three fat fingers]. First there was Drephia——
Hanno [interrupting]: Trebbia.
Bethaal: Oh, well, I don’t care.... Then there was Trasimene; then there was that other place which wasn’t marked on the map, and little Schem found for me in the very week in which I got him on to the Front Bench. You remember his speech?
[Hanno shakes his head.]
Bethaal [impatiently]: Oh well, anyhow you remember Cannae, don’t you?
Hanno: Oh yes, I remember Cannae.
Bethaal: Well, he’s bound to win. He’s bound to take the place, and then [wearily], then, as poor old Hashuah said at the Guildhall, “Annexation will be inevitable.”
Hanno: Now, look here, may I put it to you short............