“Which racket?” enquired Henry cautiously.
“The law.”
“It’s hard to say. I was a research statistician, you know.”
“Well, I don’t,” said John, “but it sounds quite frightful. Who did you research into statistics for?”
“It wasn’t a question of researching into statistics,” said Henry patiently. “I collated statistics and other people used them for research. It was a nice job, too. All you needed was a fairly good memory and a head for figures.”
“Decent hours?”
“First class. Come when you like, go when you like.”
“Congenial company?”
“Very much so.”
“Then I say again,” said John, “why come into our racket at your age? No offence—I’m not a dewy-eyed youngster myself—two more, please, Ted. But at least I’ve got the excuse that I was in the game before the war. I would have finished my articles in 1941 had Hitler not willed otherwise.”
“Well,” said Henry slowly. “I couldn’t go back to my old firm. It was an oil combine, and it went and got itself amalgamated whilst I was away, and although mine was a good sort of job they’re pretty few and far between. So I thought I’d take up law as a soft option.”
“You thought what?” John was so overcome that he spilt a good deal of his whisky, and quickly drank the rest of it before it could come to any harm.
“Why, certainly,” said Henry. “What I really like about the law is that it’s so restful. You never have to think. It’s all in the books.”
“Two more whiskies,” said John to the barman. “Doubles.”
“No fooling,” said Henry. “I did two years as a medical student when I left school, and I can assure you there’s absolutely no comparison. Think how easy it would be to perform a surgical operation, if you had Butterworth’s Forms and Precedents ever at your elbow. One, take a scapula, size six, in the right hand. Two, grasp the appendix firmly round the broad end—”
“Bung-ho!” said John.
“Can’t I buy you a drink for a change?”
“Not unless you’re a member.”
“Well, let’s go somewhere where I can.”
At Raguzzis, which is near the Berkeley Square end of Bruton Street, the conversation turned, not without a certain amount of wilful steering on Henry’s part, on to the subject of the firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine.
John had, by now, reached that well-defined stage in intoxication when every topic becomes the subject of exposition and generalisation, when sequences of thought range themselves in the speaker’s mind, strewn about with flowery metaphor and garlanded in chains of pellucid logic; airborne flights of oratory to which the only obstacle is a certain difficulty with the palatal consonants.
“Horniman, Birley and Craine,” said John, “is not one firm but four firms. It is a quadernity. It is the Gordon Selfridge of solicitors, different departments to suit all tastes and purses. For the humble but well-meaning citizens of Streatham or Brixton Mr. Brown and Mr. Baxter labour unceasingly, resting not day nor night. For the hard-faced, stern-browed moguls of commerce and industry our City offices are ever open, and the warm hearts and subtle brains of Mr. Bourlass, Mr. Bridewell and Mr. Burt beat in a mighty diapason, and their cunning fingers are never still—here underwriting a charter party, there endorsing a Bill of Exchange sans recours; and if all else palls, why, bless me, they can always fill in the time between lunch and tea by forming a limited company. In Piccadilly, those gilded darlings of fortune, Osric Ramussen and Emmanuel Oakshott, pin carnations to the palpitating bosoms of a horde of comely divorcees and spend their time, or such time as they can spare from race meetings and first nights, in drawing fantastic leases of flats in Half Moon Street and shops in the Burlington Arcade—”
“Two more whiskies,” said Henry. “What do we do in Lincoln’s Inn?”
“I’ve never really found out,” said John, “but it’s all most terribly gentlemanly. Our books of reference are Burke and Debrett and we’re almost the last firm in London that draws up strict marriage settlements and calls the heir up on his twenty-first birthday to execute a disentailing deed and drink a glass of pre-1914 sherry.”
“I thought that the peerage were all broke these days.”
“So they are,” said John regretfully. “So they are. I expect that’s why we bought up the other offices. All the real money’s in Streatham.”
At the Silver Slipper, which is between Regent Street and Glasshouse Street, and of which Mr. Bohun appeared to be a member, John found occasion, between glasses of champagne, to ask:
“You didn’t seriously mean what you said, did you?”
“What are you talking about now?”
“About solicitoring being so easy.”
“Certainly I did. If you want a really difficult job you ought to try actuarial work. I trained for eighteen months as an actuary in New York.”
At the Lettre de Cachet, a small club off the west end of Old Compton Street, John swallowed his thimbleful of apricot brandy, started to say something, folded neatly forward over the table and fell into a dreamless sleep.
When he woke up the electric clock beside the band platform showed four, the band was packing up and the last of the clientele were leaving.
Henry Bohun finished his drink and rose to his feet.
“I think we ought to be getting along,” he said regretfully. “It’s been a splendid evening.”
“Splendid,” said John. Something odd about his companion struck him.
“Aren’t you tired?” he asked.
“No,” said Henry.
“Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Not often,” said Henry.
“Why not?” said John. For himself an overmastering desire to sleep was rolling round him, enveloping him, dimming his eyes and anæsthetising his brain.
“I’ve no idea,” said Henry truthfully. “It’s just one of those things.”
Chapter Two —Tuesday— The Irritating Absence of a Trustee
The Law is utilitarian.
James Barr Ames: Law and Morals
I
“All that messuage tenement or building,” said John Cove reluctantly, “together with the outbuildings farmbuildings cottages barns sheds closets and other buildings of a permanent or quasipermanent nature erected thereon or on some part thereof together also with the several pieces or parcels of land thereto belonging and the several brothels and—”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Cove.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bellbas. The word was ‘abuttals’. I’m afraid my eyesight isn’t quite what it should be this morning.”
“No, Mr. Cove?”
“In fact, if I may let you into a secret, I find some difficulty in opening both eyes at once.”
“I expect it was all those drinks you drank last night, Mr. Cove.”
“And when I do open them,” said John, properly ignoring this interruption, “what do I see?”
“I—”
“I see a greyish-yellowish mist, Miss Bellbas, and floating round in it, like the corpses of men long drowned, are Things, frightful indescribable Things.”
“I expect you need a cup of coffee, Mr. Cove.”
“That’s a very sensible idea, Florrie. See if you can get the sergeant to produce a cup—two cups. Mr. Bohun will have one as well.”
When Miss Bellbas had departed Mr. Cove said petulantly: “I really don’t know how you contrive to look so disgustingly fit. So far as I can recollect you drank exactly the same as I did.”
“I’ll let you into the secret some day,” said Bohun. “It’s a system you have to start young or not at all—like tight-rope walking and Yogi.”