Smallbone Deceased

“I’ll go on thinking about it till the lights go out,” he said to himself. “If I haven’t got it by then I’ll give it up.”

The next thing he was aware of was the clamour of his alarm-clock calling him to another day.

‌Chapter Eleven —Thursday A.M.— Capital Appreciation

Years passed and he sat in the same place, wrote out the same documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back to the country. And little by little his distress became a definite disorder, a fixed idea—to buy a small farm somewhere by the bank of a river or a lake.

Chekhov: Gooseberries

I

“I say,” said John Cove, “have you heard?”

“No. What?”

“Eric’s going.”

“Then you did—”

“No,” said John. “I didn’t. That’s the scrumptious part about it. My conscience is absolutely clear. But Eric was so convinced that I should split on him—judging others by his own shocking standards—that he came to the conclusion it would be more dignified and grown-up if he got his own say in first. So he demanded an interview with Bill Birley and handed in his resignation all gentlemanly-like.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I only got this part from Charlie—you know what those basement stairs are like—so you mustn’t take it for gospel. But apparently Bill Birley was suffering from a number-nine hangover from this Chittering business and the police and what with one thing and another he definitely wasn’t at his mental best. When Eric stalked in and said: ‘I wish to resign,’ Birley just gazed at him in a suffering way for a moment and said, ‘All right, when?’ and the whole scene fell a bit flat. Eric, apparently, in an endeavour to waken a flicker of interest, said, ‘And I don’t mind about notice. If it’s all the same to you I shall leave tomorrow.’ However, even this didn’t stir the great man, who simply moaned and said—Oh, hello, Eric. We were just talking about you.”

“I expect you were,” said Eric Duxford. He was obviously in that uncomfortable state of mind when one is spoiling for a row without knowing quite who to have it with. “I hear you called round at my office on Tuesday night.”

“Well, I didn’t actually know it was your office,” said John, tilting back his chair to a dangerous angle. “It seemed, from the information painted on the door, to belong jointly to a Mr. Smith and a Mr. Selverman.”

“Smith’s retired,” said Eric shortly. “Henry Selverman’s my partner. And a damned good business man.”

“A one-man firm?”

“And what of it?” said Eric. “He knows more about the law than any two of the stuck-up ducal bootlickers in this office.”

“No doubt,” said John. “I should say he must have a very close—almost a personal—acquaintance with certain branches of the law. Breach of contract, for instance, or that lovely, old-fashioned tort, seduction of servants—”

“Look here,” said Eric. “If I thought you’d gone and told Birley—”

“You know damned well I didn’t,” said John coolly. “And if it’s any consolation to you, I never intended to. However, since you have chosen to award yourself that order of the boot which, in my opinion, you so richly deserved—”

“You filthy cad.”

“Control yourself,” said John. He tilted his chair to an even more impossible angle. “You’re too fat for fighting and, in any case, we are both long past the age when exhibitions of personal violence have anything to recommend them.”

“I have no intention,” said Eric, “of demeaning myself by laying hands on you.”

“That hissing noise you heard,” said John to Bohun, “was me sighing with relief.”

“But I will say this”—Eric paused at the door—“I’m bloody glad I’m not staying in this place. It makes me sick. Day after day: ‘Yes, me lord, no, me lord. May I have the honour of blacking your lordship’s boots for you.’ You’re not solicitors. You’re flunkies. I can tell you, I shall be glad to get into an office where we do some real work. It mayn’t be as swanky as this, but we are our own masters…”

Bohun listened, fascinated. Excitement was rubbing all the careful gloss off Eric’s speech, and the brass was showing through in increasing patches.

“That’s the boy,” said John. “I should slam the door, too. It’s almost the only way of rounding off a good sentence like that.”

Eric gave him a final annihilating look and stalked out.

“Do you know,” said John, when he had gone, “if he’d had the guts to say that whilst he was employed here—actually on the pay-roll, I mean—I’d almost have been forced to applaud him. There was a good deal of truth in it. As it is, however, it seems a bit like spitting and running away.”

II

Hazlerigg, at this moment, was considering a series of reports. They dealt in great detail with the letter which had been found under Miss Cornel’s desk.

“The exhibit,” said the first, “corresponds in twelve distinct instances with the test sample supplied. Texture, colour, weave, depth of impress, colour of impress, etc. etc. etc.”