have. But I am not going to tell you who he is till the right time comes.'
Checkley grumbled inaudibly.
'If I had been less busy,' Mr. Dering went on, 'I might have married and had sons of my own to put into the House. But somehow, being very much occupied always, and never thinking about such things, I let the time pass by. I was never, even as a young man, greatly attracted to love or to young women. Their charms, such as they are, seem to me to depend upon nothing but a single garment.'
'Take away their frocks,' said Checkley, 'and what are they? All alike – all alike. I've been married myself – women are expensive frauds.'
'Well – things being as they are, Checkley, I am going to take a partner.'
'You'll do as you like,' said his servant. 'Mark my words, however; you've got ten years more of work in you yet – and all through these ten years you'll regret having a partner. Out of every hundred pounds his share will have to come. Think of that!'
'It is eight years, I remember,' Mr. Dering went on, 'since first I thought of taking a partner. Eight years – and for much the same reason as now. I found my memory going. There were gaps in it – days, or bits of days, which I could not recollect. I was greatly terrified. The man whom I first thought of for a partner was that young Arundel, now – '
'Who forged your name. Lucky you didn't have him.'
'Who ran away in a rage because certain circumstances seemed to connect him with the crime.'
'Seemed? Did connect him.'
'Then the symptoms disappeared. Now they have returned, as I told you. I have always regretted the loss of young Arundel. He was clever and a quick worker.'
'He was a forger,' said the clerk stoutly. – 'Is there anything more I can do for you?'
'Nothing; thank you.'
'Then I'll go. On Saturday afternoon I collect my little rents. Not much – in your way of thinking. A good deal to me. I hope you'll like your partner when you do get him. I hope I shan't live to see him the master here and you knuckling under. I hope I shan't see him driving away the clients.'
'I hope you will not see any of these distressing consequences, Checkley. – Good-day.'
The old clerk went away, shutting the outer door after him. Then the lawyer was the sole occupant of the rooms. He was also the sole occupant of the whole house and perhaps of the whole Square. It was three o'clock.
He sat leaning back in his chair, looking through the open window upon the trees in the Square garden. Presently there fell upon his face a curious change. It was as if the whole of the intelligence was taken out of it: his eyes gazed steadily into space with no expression whatever in them; the lips slightly parted, his head fell back; the soul and spirit of the man had gone out of him, leaving a machine which breathed.
The watch in his pocket ticked audibly: there was no other sound in the room – the old man sat quite motionless.
Four o'clock struck from the Clock Tower in the High Court of Justice, from St. Clement's Church, from Westminster, from half-a-dozen clocks which could be heard in the quiet of the Saturday afternoon. But Mr. Dering heard nothing.
Still he sat in his place with idle hands, and a face like a mask for lack of thought.
The clocks struck five.
He neither moved nor spoke.
The clocks struck six – seven – eight.
The shades of evening began to gather in the corners of the room as the sun sank lower towards his setting. At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear – man, woman, or cat – in the chambers, and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkley, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly – the only lavishment of which he was ever guilty – on the floor. Junior clerks brought buns and biscuits, or even apples, which they devoured furtively. Mr. Dering himself took his luncheon in his own room, leaving crumbs. There was plenty for a small colony of mice. They came out, therefore, as usual; they stopped at sight of a man, an unwonted man, in a chair. But he moved not: he was asleep: he was dead: they ran without fear all about the rooms.
It was past nine, when the chambers were as dark as at this season of the year they ever are, that Mr. Dering returned to consciousness.
He sat up, staring about him. The room was dark. He looked at his watch. Half-past nine. 'What is this?' he asked. 'Have I been asleep for seven hours? Seven hours? I was not asleep when Checkley went away. Why did I fall asleep? I feel as if I had been somewhere – doing something. What? I cannot remember. This strange sensation comes oftener. It is time that I should take a partner before something worse happens. I am old – I am old.' He rose and walked across the room erect and with firm step. 'I am old and worn out and spent. Time to give up the keys – old and spent.'
CHAPTER III
THE SELECT CIRCLE
At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. They came every evening at eight: and they sat till eleven, drinking and talking. In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings. Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion. Most of the regular visitors knew each other: when thy did not, it was tavern politeness not to ask; a case is on record of four cronies, who used the Cock in Meet Street for thirty years, not one knowing either the name or the trade of the other three. Yet when one died, the other three pined away. This good old custom is now decayed. The respectable burgess stays at home, which is much more monotonous. Yet there may still be found a parlour here and there with a society meeting every evening all the year round.
The parlour of the Salutation was a good-sized room wainscoted and provided with a sanded floor. It was furnished with a dozen wooden chairs, and three small round tables, the chairs disposed in a circle so as to prevent corners or cliques in conversation. Sacred is the fraternity, liberty, and equality of the parlour. The room was low, and, in the evenings, always hot with its two flaming unprotected gas jets; the window was never opened except in the morning, and there was always present a rich perfume of tobacco, beer, and spirits, both that anciently generated and that of the day's creation.
Among the frequenters, – who were, it must be confessed, a somewhat faded or decayed company – was, to put him first because he was the richest the great Mr. Robert Hellyer, of Barnard's Inn, usurer or money-lender. Nobody quite likes the profession – one knows not why. Great fortunes have been made in it; the same fortunes have been dissipated by the money-lenders' heirs. Such fortunes do not stick, somehow. Mr. Hellyer, for instance, was reputed wealthy beyond the dreams of the wildest desire. It was also said of him, under breath and in whispers and envious murmurs, that should a man borrow a five-pound note of him, that borrower would count himself lucky if he escaped with the loss of seventy-five pounds; and might generally expect to lose the whole of his household furniture, and the half of his income, for the rest of his natural life. To be sure, he sometimes had losses, as he said himself, with a groan; as when an unscrupulous client jumped off the Embankment, when he had not paid more than fifty pounds on the original five; or when a wicked man sold off his furniture secretly,
