"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Well--nothing." Mr. Vulto removed his eye-gla.s.ses and stood up.

"Well, good morning. I'll walk round to my solicitors." Edward Henry seized the option.

"That will be simpler," said Mr. Vulto. Slossons much preferred to deal with lawyers than with laymen, because it increased costs and vitalised the profession.

At that moment a stout, red-faced, and h.o.a.ry man puffed very authoritatively into the room.

"Vulto," he cried sharply, "Mr. Wrissell's here. Didn't they tell you?"

"Yes, Mr. Slosson," answered Vulto, suddenly losing all his sarcastic quality and becoming a very junior partner. "I was just engaged with Mr.--" (he paused to glance at his desk)--"Machin, whose singular letter we received this morning about an alleged option on the lease of the chapel-site at Piccadilly Circus--the Woldo estate, sir. You remember, sir?"

"This the man?" enquired Mr. Slosson, ex-president of the Law Society, with a jerk of the thumb.

Edward Henry said: "This is the man."

"Well," said Mr. Slosson, lifting his chin and still puffing, "it would be extremely interesting to hear his story, at any rate. I was just telling Mr. Wrissell about it. Come this way, sir. I've heard some strange things in my time, but--" He stopped. "Please follow me, sir,"

he ordained.

"I'm dashed if I'll follow you!" Edward Henry desired to say, but he had not the courage to say it. And because he was angry with himself he determined to make matters as unpleasant as possible for the innocent Mr. Slosson, who was used to bullying, and so well paid for bullying, that really no blame could be apportioned to him. It would have been as reasonable to censure an ordinary person for breathing as to censure Mr.

Slosson for bullying. And so Edward Henry was steeling himself: "I'll do him in the eye for that, even if it costs me every cent I've got." (A statement characterised by poetical licence!)

III.

Mr. Slosson, senior, heard Edward Henry's story, but seemingly did not find it quite as interesting as he had prophesied it would be. When Edward Henry had finished the old man drummed on an enormous table, and said:

"Yes, yes. And then?" His manner was far less bullying than in the room of Mr. Vulto.

"It's your turn now, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry.

"My turn? How?"

"To go on with the story." He glanced at the clock. "I've brought it up to date--eleven fifteen o'clock this morning, _anno domini_." And as Mr. Slosson continued to drum on the table and to look out of the window, Edward Henry also drummed on the table and looked out of the window.

The chamber of the senior partner was a very different matter from Mr.

Vulto's. It was immense. It was not disfigured by j.a.panned boxes inartistically lettered in white, as are most lawyers' offices. Indeed, in aspect it resembled one of the cosier rooms in a small and decaying but still comfortable club. It had easy chairs and cigar-boxes.

Moreover, the sun got into it, and there was a view of the comic yet stately Victorian Gothic of the Law Courts. The sun enheartened Edward Henry. And he felt secure in an unimpugnable suit of clothes; in the shape of his collar, the colour of his necktie, the style of his creaseless boots; and in the protuberance of his pocketbook in his pocket.

As Mr. Slosson had failed to notice the compet.i.tion of his drumming, he drummed still louder. Whereupon Mr. Slosson stopped drumming. Edward Henry gazed amiably around. Right at the back of the room, before a back window that gave on the whitewashed wall, a man was rapidly putting his signature to a number of papers. But Mr. Slosson had ignored the existence of this man, treating him apparently as a figment of the disordered brain, or as an optical illusion.

"I've nothing to say," said Mr. Slosson.

"Or to do?"

"Or to do."

"Well, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry, "your junior partner has already outlined your policy of masterly inactivity. So I may as well go. I did say I'd go to my solicitors; but it's occurred to me that as I'm a princ.i.p.al I may as well first of all see the princ.i.p.als on the other side. I only came here because it mentions in the option that the matter is to be completed here; that's all."

"You a princ.i.p.al!" exclaimed Mr. Slosson. "It seems to me you're a long way removed from a princ.i.p.al. The alleged option is given to a Miss Rose Euclid."

"Excuse me--_the_ Miss Rose Euclid."

"Miss Rose Euclid. She divides up her alleged interest into fractions and sells them here and there, and you buy them up one after another."

Mr. Slosson laughed, not unamiably. "You're a princ.i.p.al about five times removed."

"Well," said Edward Henry, "whatever I am, I have a sort of idea I'll go and see this Mr. Gristle or Wrissell. Can you--"

The man at the distant desk turned his head. Mr. Slosson coughed. The man rose.

"This is Mr. Wrissell," said Mr. Slosson with a gesture from which confusion was not absent.

"Good morning," said the advancing Mr. Rollo Wrissell, and he said it with an accent more Kensingtonian than any accent that Edward Henry had ever heard. His lounging and yet elegant walk a.s.sorted well with the accent. His black clothes were loose and untidy. Such boots as his could not have been worn by Edward Henry even in the Five Towns without blushing shame, and his necktie looked as if a baby or a puppy had been playing with it. Nevertheless, these shortcomings made absolutely no difference whatever to the impressiveness of Mr. Rollo Wrissell, who was famous for having said once: "I put on whatever comes to hand first, and people don't seem to mind."

Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to one of the seven great families which once governed--and, by the way, still do govern--England, Scotland, and Ireland. The members of these families may be divided into two species: those who rule, and those who are too lofty in spirit even to rule--those who exist. Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to the latter species. His nose and mouth had the exquisite refinement of the descendant of generations of art-collectors and poet-patronisers. He enjoyed life, but not with rude activity, like the grosser members of the ruling caste, rather with a certain rare languor. He sniffed and savoured the whole spherical surface of the apple of life with those delicate nostrils rather than bit into it. His one conviction was that in a properly managed world nothing ought to occur to disturb or agitate the perfect tranquillity of his existing. And this conviction was so profound, so visible even in his lightest gesture and glance, that it exerted a mystic influence over the entire social organism, with the result that practically nothing ever did occur to disturb or agitate the perfect tranquillity of Mr. Rollo Wrissell's existing. For Mr. Rollo Wrissell the world was indeed almost ideal.

Edward Henry breathed to himself:

"This is the genuine article."

And, being an Englishman, he was far more impressed by Mr. Wrissell than he had been by the much vaster reputations of Rose Euclid, Seven Sachs, Mr. Slosson, senior. At the same time he inwardly fought against Mr.

Wrissell's silent and unconscious dominion over him, and all the defiant Midland belief that one body is as good as anybody else surged up in him--but stopped at his lips.

"Please don't rise," Mr. Wrissell entreated, waving both hands. "I'm very sorry to hear of this unhappy complication," he went on to Edward Henry with the most adorable and winning politeness. "It pains me."

(His martyred expression said: "And really I ought not to be pained.") "I'm quite convinced that you are here in absolute good faith--the most absolute good faith, Mr.--"

"Machin," suggested Mr. Slosson.

"Ah! Pardon me, Mr. Machin. And, naturally, in the management of enormous estates such as Lord Woldo's little difficulties are apt to occur.... I'm sorry you've been put in a false position. You have all my sympathies. But of course you understand that in this particular case.... I myself have taken up the lease from the estate. I happen to be interested in a great movement. The plans of my church have been pa.s.sed by the county council. Building operations have indeed begun."

"Oh, chuck it!" said Edward Henry inexcusably--but such were his words.

A surfeit of Mr. Wrissell's calm egotism and accent and fatigued harmonious gestures drove him to commit this outrage upon the very fabric of civilisation.

Mr. Wrissell, if he had ever met with the phrase,--which is doubtful,--had certainly never heard it addressed to himself; conceivably he might have once come across it in turning over the pages of a slang dictionary. A tragic expression traversed his bewildered features; and then he recovered himself somewhat.

"I--"

"Go and bury yourself!" said Edward Henry, with increased savagery.

Mr. Wrissell, having comprehended, went. He really did go. He could not tolerate scenes, and his glance showed that any forcible derangement of his habit of existing smoothly would nakedly disclose the unyielding adamantine selfishness that was the basis of the Wrissell philosophy.

His glance was at least harsh and bitter. He went in silence, and rapidly. Mr. Slosson, senior, followed him at a great pace.

Edward Henry was angry. Strange though it may seem, the chief cause of his anger was the fact that his own manners and breeding were lower, coa.r.s.er, clumsier, more brutal, than Mr. Wrissell's.

After what appeared to be a considerable absence Mr. Slosson, senior, returned into the room. Edward Henry, steeped in peculiar meditations, was repeating: