Smallbone Deceased

Now the real trouble was—and it is pointless to pursue this narrative further without being quite honest about it—that the two partners disliked each other; and the reason for it was inherent in the characters of the men themselves, which were as immiscible as oil and water.

Mr. Craine had performed throughout the 1914 war with some credit in an infantry battalion. Mr. Birley had evaded most of the war with an allegedly weak heart. Mr. Craine was a cheerful little extrovert, and a heavily-married man. Mr. Birley was a confirmed bachelor, who had bullied his adoring mother into the grave and was now engaged in nagging his elderly sister in the same direction.

Even the type of work in which each specialised reflected their discrepant natures.

Mr. Craine was a devotee of a certain swashbuckling sort of litigation; with occasional forays in the direction of avoidance of death duties and evasion of income tax; twin subjects exceedingly dear to the hearts of the firm’s exalted clients. One sub-section of the 1936 Finance Act, it may be mentioned in passing, was thought to have been drafted expressly to frustrate Mr. Craine’s well-meant efforts.

Mr. Birley, on the other hand, was a conveyancer. A pedlar of words and a reduplicator of phrases. A master of the Whereas and Hereinbefore. He was reputed to tie a tighter settlement than any conveyancing counsel in Lincoln’s Inn.

Both men were very competent lawyers.

“I’ve had a letter from Rew,” said Mr. Craine. He referred to Mr. Rew, General Secretary of the Consequential Insurance Company, one of their biggest clients.

“What has he got to say for himself?”

“You know what Rew is. He never says very much. But what he seems to want to know is, can Bob Horniman look after their business as his father used to.”

“I thought we’d argued all this out before.”

“So we did,” said Mr. Craine. “So we did. And in principle we all agreed that we’d keep the division of work exactly as it was—Bob taking on all his father’s clients with Bohun to help him. But I must admit, I’d forgotten about the Consequential—”

“What about them?”

Mr. Craine nearly said: “You know as well as I do what about them.” Instead he kept his temper and merely remarked: “Well, we aren’t bound to them in any way, you know. Neither side is under any obligation to the other. They used to give us their business—a lot of business—because Abel did their work as well or better than anyone else could do it. I’d hate to lose them.”

“Do you mean that Bob doesn’t know his job?”

“No, I don’t. I mean that he’s young—and, well, Abel taught him a lot about filing systems and the Horniman method of office management, but I sometimes thought he kept him a bit in the dark about the clients themselves.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Birley. “Well, what do you suggest?”

“I don’t suppose you could—”

“Certainly not. I’ve got more than enough work as it is. I think you’re worrying unnecessarily. He’ll pick it up as he goes along. By the way, how’s Bohun shaping?”

“He could hardly be said to have shaped yet,” said Mr. Craine, “since it’s his first morning in the office. He’s got a remarkable record.”

“First-class honours in his Final, you mean.”

“Not only that. It’s the speed he did it all. He only took up law just over two years ago, you know. He got a special exemption to sit the exam early. He was a statistician before that, and a very brilliant one, I believe. And he holds actuarial qualifications.”

“Well, then, he ought to be able to deal with insurance work.”

“I expect he will, eventually,” said Mr. Craine. “I’ll try and make time to keep an eye on him and Bob—”

“Hrrmph!” said Mr. Birley. Having got his own way he became a shade more amiable and the conversation turned to other topics.

Meanwhile both subjects of this conversation were experiencing their own difficulties.

Henry Bohun, having dismissed Mrs. Porter, was once more staring thoughtfully at the little stack of cards on the desk in front of him, trying to relate them in some comprehensible manner to his allotted share of that morning’s post. The more he read them the less they seemed to mean, but finding that there were fifty-two of them he dealt out four bridge hands and came to the conclusion that he could make three no trumps without difficulty on his holding, which included such obvious winners as “The Duchess of Ashby de la Zouche—(questions relating to her claim for Dower)”, “Lieutenant-General Fireside’s Marriage Settlement No. 3)” (his third marriage or his third settlement, Henry wondered), and most promising, “The Reverend the Metropolitan of Albania—Private Affairs.” He reshuffled the cards and started a card house, which was destroyed at its fourth storey by the interruption of Miss Cornel in search of the Law List.

“Never mind,” he said, “it couldn’t have gone much higher. We shouldn’t have got planning permission for more than six floors. Now that you are here perhaps you can help me to sort things out a bit. Only start from the beginning and go slowly.”