THEY   ARRIVE	49
with himself as if he'd just backed a dozen winners.
German he was. Speaking English as good as you and
me, and dressed all up to the nines, but German all
over him. And he had backed the winners all right, you
bet he had. Got a pocket full of orders, he had, What's
the good of having a war, I say, if it only means
Germans coming over here and pinching trade right
under our noses. Cor!-makes me sick-thirty, years in
the trade and tramping round every week in and week
out, and nothing doin' two-thirds o' the time, not a
thing, and foreigners coming here with fur coats on-
fur coats! Taking the bread right out of your mouth,
that's all they're doing."
"Quite so, Goath," cried Mr. Dersingham. "I don't
say I'm not with you there. But we can buy from
Germany, just the same, and have been doing for some
time, but it's beginning to look as if we can't compete.
That's what I was going to talk about, to begin with.
We shall have to try and do some cutting, too. It's our
only chance. And the only way to do that-I think you
fellows will agree, especially you, Smeeth-is to reduce
expenses. The - er - what's-its-name - er - overhead
charges are too big," Having found this word "over-
head," so suggestive of big business, of keen men piling
up fortunes in forty-two storey buildings, Mr. Dersing-
ham clutched at it thankfully: it was a floating plank on
the wide ocean of puzzle and muddle into which he had
suddenly been plunged. "That's it. The first thing, the
very first thing, we've got to do is to reduce the over-
heads in this business."
Mr. Smeeth tried to look very brisk and business-like,
but he seemed greyer than ever and there was a mourn-
ful droop in his voice. "Well, we can try, sir. But it