CHAPTER V

MR. CURPET,OF the firm of Curpet and Smythe, whose name was painted in black and white on the dark green door, had told him that the office hours were from nine-thirty to six. The clock of the Law Courts was striking a quarter to ten. He hesitated a moment, and then seized the handle; but the door was fast, and he descended the two double flights of iron stairs into the quadrangle.

New Serjeant’s Court was a large modern building of very red brick with terra-cotta facings, eight storeys high; but in spite of its faults of colour and its excessive height, ample wall spaces and temperate ornamentation gave it a dignity and comeliness sufficient to distinguish it from other buildings in the locality. In the centre of the court was an oval patch of brown earth, with a few trees whose paleleaved tops, struggling towards sunlight, reached to the middle of the third storey. Round this plantation ran an immaculate roadway of wooden blocks, flanked by an equally immaculate asphalt footpath.

The court possessed its own private lamp-posts, and these were wrought of iron in an antique design.

Men and boys, grave and unconsciously oppressed by the burden of the coming day, were continually appearing out of the gloom of the long tunnelled entrance and vanishing into one or other of the twelve doorways. Presently a carriage and pair drove in, and stopped opposite Richard. A big man of about fifty, with a sagacious red and blue face, jumped alertly out, followed by an attentive clerk carrying a blue sack. It seemed to Richard that he knew the features of the big man from portraits, and, following the pair up the staircase of No. 2, he discovered from the legend on the door through which they disappeared that he had been in the presence of Her Majesty’s Attorney-General. Simultaneously with a misgiving as to his ability to reach the standard of clerical ability doubtless required by Messrs. Curpet and Smythe, who did business cheek by jowl with an attorney-general and probably employed him, came an elevation of spirit as he darkly guessed what none can realise completely, that a man’s future lies on his own knees, and on the knees of no gods whatsoever.

He continued his way upstairs, but Messrs. Curpet and Smythe’s portal was still locked. Looking down the well, he espied a boy crawling reluctantly and laboriously upward, with a key in his hand which he dragged across the banisters. In course of time the boy reached Messrs. Curpet and Smythe’s door, and opening it stepped neatly over a pile of letters which lay immediately within. Richard followed him.

“Oh! My name’s Larch,” said Richard, as if it had just occurred to him that the boy might be interested in the fact. “Do you know which is my room?”

The boy conducted him along a dark passage with green doors on either side, to a room at the end. It was furnished mainly with two writing-tables and two armchairs; in one corner was a disused copying-press, in another an immense pile of reporters’ notebooks; on the mantelpiece, a tumbler, a duster, and a broken desk lamp.

“That’s your seat,” said the boy, pointing to the larger table, and disappeared. Richard disposed of his coat and hat and sat down, trying to feel at ease and not succeeding.

At five minutes past ten a youth entered with the “Times” under his arm. Richard waited for him to speak, but he merely stared and took off his overcoat. Then he said, —

“You’ve got my hook. If you don’t mind I’ll put your things on this other one.”

“Certainly,” assented Richard.

The youth spread his back luxuriously to the empty fireplace and opened the “Times,” when another and smaller boy put his head in at the door.

“Jenkins, Mr. Alder wants the ‘Times.’”

The youth silently handed over the advertisement pages which were lying on the table. In a minute the boy returned.

“Mr. Alder says he wants the inside of the ‘Times.’”

“Tell Mr. Alder to go to hell, with my compliments.” The boy hesitated.

“Go on, now,” Jenkins insisted. The boy hung on the door-handle, smiling dubiously, and then went out.

“Here, wait a minute!” Jenkins called him back. “Perhaps you’d better give it him. Take the damn thing away.”

A sound of hurried footsteps in the next room was succeeded by an imperious call for Jenkins, at which Jenkins slipped nimbly into his chair and untied a bundle of papers.

“Jenkins!” the call came again, with a touch of irritation in it, but Jenkins did not move. The door was thrust open.

“Oh! You are there, Jenkins. Just come in and take a letter down.” The tones were quite placid.

“Yes, Mr. Smythe.”

“I never take any notice of Smythe’s calls,” said Jenkins, when he returned. “If he wants me, he must either ring or fetch me. If I once began it, I should be running in and out of his room all day, and I’ve quite enough to do without that.”

“Fidgety, eh?” Richard suggested.

“Fidgety’s no word for it,I tell you. Alder — that’s the manager, you know — said only yesterday that he has less troubl