is the first working day of the week: and upon Monday—at least on some Mondays—Mr. Kirby actually went to his office.
Mr. Kirby so far loved duty or routine or respected the tradition of centuries—or anything else you like—as to visit his office upon some Mondays at sometime or other in the forenoon. It was a superstition with which he could not break, sensible as he would have been to have broken with it. His ample and increasing income proceeded mainly from investment; he was utterly devoid of avarice; he had neither family nor heirs. He was delighted that his junior partners should do the work, and they were welcome to the financial result of it. But still, the firm was Kirby and Blake, and his name was Kirby, and I think he had an inward feeling, unexpressed, that he stood a little better with his fellow-citizens of Ormeston, and with his very numerous friends, if he kept up the appearance of visiting the place—on some Mondays.
Anyhow, visit it he did—usually as long after eleven as he dared; and leave it he did—usually as long before one as his conscience would let him. Invariably did he say that he would return in the afternoon, and almost invariably did he fail to do so, save perhaps to look in vacantly, ask a few irrelevant questions, glance at his watch, say that he was late for some appointment—and go out again.
There were, indeed, occasions when the familiar advice upon which the chief of his acquaintances depended necessitated a formal interview at the office: commonly he preferred to conduct such things in their private houses or his own. Fortune favoured him in this much, that the very short time he spent at his place of business was not usually productive of anxiety or even of a client whom he personally must see. But upon this Monday, as it so happened, his luck failed him.
It was a quarter to twelve when he came briskly in wearing that good-humoured and rather secret smile, nodded to the clerks, passed into his own room, and proceeded to do his duty as a solicitor by reaching for the telephone, with the object of reserving a table for lunch at the club. As he was in the midst of this professional occupation, a clerk, to his intense annoyance, begged him to receive as a matter of urgency a Mr. Postlethwaite. The name was familiar to Mr. Kirby, and he groaned in spirit.
"Oh, Mr. Blake can see him!" he said impatiently. "No, he can't; no, I remember, he can't."
He scratched his chin and managed to frown at the forehead without relaxing that small perpetual smile.
"Send him in here," he sighed; "and look here, Thurston, has he got anything with him?"
"Not that I could see, Sir," answered the clerk respectfully.
"Oh, I don't mean a dog or a sister-in-law," replied Mr. Kirby without dignity and somewhat impatiently. "I mean a damned great roll of paper."
"Well, sir," said Thurston the clerk with continued respect, "he certainly carried something of that sort in his hand."
"Show him in, Thurston, show him in," said Mr. Kirby louder than ever, and leaning back in his chair. …
He knew this old Postlethwaite of old, a man of grievances, a man whom it was the lawyer's business to dissuade from law; a man whom he couldn't quite call mad, but a man whom Mr. Kirby certainly did not trust with any member of the firm; a man with whose considerable business in scattered freeholds (quite twenty of them up and down the suburbs of Ormeston, and nearly all of them unfortunate investments) Kirby in a moment of generosity or folly—perhaps rather of freakishness—had undertaken for his firm to let and sell and value, and now he wished he hadn't!
For as Mr. Postlethwaite grew older, he grew more frightening, and he was a man now nearly seventy years of age. But his years had in no way diminished his almost epileptic vigour. Mr. Kirby could hear the terrible tramp of his great boots and the exclamations of his great voice in the corridor. The door opened, and he came in. He stood tall and menacing in the entry, and slammed the door behind him. His abundant white hair tumbled in great shocks over his head, his ill-kept beard bristled upon all sides from his face, and his eyes, which were reddish in colour (horrible thought!), glared like coals. His greeting was not friendly, but it was at least direct.
"You got me into this, Kirby," he shouted by way of good morning, "and you 've got to get me out!"
If Mr. Kirby disliked business, he certainly loved an adventure. His permanent smile grew more lively. His sinewy neck seemed to shorten, he thrust his determined chin a trifle forward, and said with a wave of his hand—
"Pray sit down, Mr. Postlethwaite, I am entirely at your service."