“It’s so definite,” said Miss Bellbas. “I couldn’t go on, not in the face of that. Luckily the company took back the cruise tickets. I shall just have to wait till the stars come round again.”
“But, Florrie—”
“Now wait.” Miss Cornel spoke in an authoritative voice. She picked up both newspapers and a deep silence fell on the secretaries’ room, broken only by the plaintive ringing of the inter-office telephone, of which no one took the least notice. After close study of both papers she announced: “I have it. No—wait. Yes, of course.”
“What, Miss Cornel?”
“Last month’s paper doesn’t actually mention the sea, does it? As I thought. It says ‘the great waters’. Why, it’s as clear as clear can be. You must take your holiday in the Lake District. Great Waters and High Hills. Red for the—let me see—for the ironstone crags and grey for the lakes.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Bellbas.
“And the last bit’s quite clear, too. You must take a cheap fortnightly return ticket. That’ll save you a modest sum in fourteen days’ time.”
This last stroke convinced everybody. Even Mrs. Porter, a quiet, middle-aged woman who had so far held herself aloof from the discussion, joined in to contribute an account of how her brother had avoided a train accident by intelligent reading of the tea leaves.
“I wonder if you’d mind coming in and taking a few letters,” said Bohun timidly, and as it proved inaudibly, since no one looked in his direction.
“You must make it a walking tour,” said Miss Chittering. “You can have that big walking-stick. You know—the one the Duke of Laxater left in the waiting-room—and Miss Cornel will lend you her big green rucksack.”
“Well,” said Miss Cornel, “since you’re so kindly lending her everybody else’s belongings, why not start with your own dressing-case?”
“Oh, no, really. I couldn’t do that,” said Miss Chittering, anxiously. “You wouldn’t want a dressing-case, would you, Florrie? Not on a walking tour. Why, it’s made of real crocodile skin. A rucksack would be much more suitable.”
“I—” said Miss Bellbas.
“If your dressing-case is crocodile, my fur coat’s polar bear,” said Miss Cornel flatly.
“Mrs. Porter,” said Bohun.
“I was assured when I bought it,” said Miss Chittering, “that it was absolutely genuine Congo crocodile—”
“MRS. PORTER!”
“Oh, Mr. Bohun, I didn’t see you come in.”
“Would you mind coming in and taking some letters?”
At this moment John Cove appeared looking slightly flushed. Evidently he had got the worst of his arithmetical discussion with Mr. Craine.
“Heave ho, Miss Bellbas,” he said. “We’ve got to do it all again.”
Miss Bellbas, however, seemed to have something on her mind.
“I should never have thought it,” she said to Miss Cornel.
“Thought what?”
“That your fur coat was polar bear.”
“That’s just it,” said Miss Cornel patiently. “It isn’t.”
“But I thought you said—”
“Florrie, my love,” said John Cove. “You really are the most literal creature on earth. Does irony mean nothing to you? Has sarcasm no place in your life? Do the shafts of satire pass you by? Have you never even heard of the homely figure of speech?”
“Yes,” said Miss Bellbas doubtfully.
“If I said to you, ‘I’m dying of hunger’ would you hurry out to summon the coroner and the undertaker? Would you search yourself anxiously for traces of strawberry jam if someone accused you of being a—”
“Really, Mr. Cove!”
II
“It would appear, Miss Chittering,” said Mr. Birley smoothly, “that you must imagine me to be a highly moral man.”
Miss Chittering looked blank but surmised it was something to do with the letter she had just typed and which Mr. Birley was now perusing.
“I take it as a compliment, of course.”
“Yes, Mr. Birley.”
“But I’m afraid it won’t do.” He scored the letter heavily through. “When I said, ‘This is a matter which will have to be conducted entirely by principals,’ I intended it to be understood that the work would be done by a partner in the firm concerned, not that it would be carried out according to ethical standards.”
“I never really know the difference between principal and principle,” said Miss Chittering apologetically. “It’s often been explained to me, but I just never seem to pick on the right one.”
“Oh, and another thing,” said Mr. Birley. “You do not address a man as Thomas Smallhorn, O.B.E., Esquire.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Birley.”
“It’s not that I object myself, of course, Miss Chittering, but the recipient might imagine that I was unaware of the commoner usages of polite society, and the reputation of the firm would suffer accordingly.”
Mr. Birley tore both pages of the letter slowly across and dropped them into the basket—which Miss Chittering felt to be rather mean, since the top page could quite easily have been salvaged, and attached to a new second page, which in any case only had three lines on it, besides the offending address.
“I sometimes wonder what we pay you such a princely salary for,” went on Mr. Birley.
This might conceivably have been intended as a joke, and Miss Chittering rewarded it with a nervous titter.
“If you are uncertain about these things, ask Miss Cornel or someone who knows their job—”
This was definitely unkind, and Miss Chittering flushed, but was spared the responsibility of answering by the arrival of Mr. Craine with some papers.
She made her escape.
“I don’t know if you’ve got a moment,” said Mr. Craine.
“What is it?” said Mr. Birley, in a far from gracious tone.
Now the real trouble was—and it is pointless to pursue this narrative further without being quite honest about it—that the two partners disliked each other; and the reason for it was inherent in the characters of the men themselves, which were as immiscible as oil and water.
Mr. Craine had performed throughout the 1914 war with some credit in an infantry battalion. Mr. Birley had evaded most of the war with an allegedly weak heart. Mr. Craine was a cheerful little extrovert, and a heavily-married man. Mr. Birley was a confirmed bachelor, who had bullied his adoring mother into the grave and was now engaged in nagging his elderly sister in the same direction.
Even the type of work in which each specialised reflected their discrepant natures.
Mr. Craine was a devotee of a certain swashbuckling sort of litigation; with occasional forays in the direction of avoidance of death duties and evasion of income tax; twin subjects exceedingly dear to the hearts of the firm’s exalted clients. One sub-section of the 1936 Finance Act, it may be mentioned in passing, was thought to have been drafted expressly to frustrate Mr. Craine’s well-meant efforts.
Mr. Birley, on the other hand, was a conveyancer. A pedlar of words and a reduplicator of phrases. A master of the Whereas and Hereinbefore. He was reputed to tie a tighter settlement than any conveyancing counsel in Lincoln’s Inn.
Both men were very competent lawyers.
“I’ve had a letter from Rew,” said Mr. Craine. He referred to Mr. Rew, General Secretary of the Consequential Insurance Company, one of their biggest clients.
“What has he got to say for himself?”
“You know what Rew is. He never says very much. But what he seems to want to know is, can Bob Horniman look after their business as his father used to.”