Part 5 (1/2)

And later Bishop said, again apropos of nothing:

”Of course it's only too true that the value of money has fallen by about half. But on the other hand interest has about doubled. You can get ten per cent on quite safe security in these days. Even Governments have to pay about seven--as you know.”

”Yes,” concurred Mr. Prohack.

Ten thousand pounds a year!

And then he thought:

”What an infernal nuisance it would be if there was a revolution! Oh!

But there couldn't be. It's unthinkable. Revolution everywhere, yes; but not in England or America!”

And he saw with the most sane and steady insight that the final duty of a Government was to keep order. Change there must be, but let change come gradually. Injustices must be remedied, naturally, but without any upheaval! Yet in the club some of the cronies (and he among them), after inveighing against profiteers and against the covetousness of trades unions, had often held that ”a good red revolution” was the only way of knocking sense into the heads of these two cla.s.ses.

The car got involved in a block of traffic near the Mansion House, and rain began to fall. The two occupants of the car watched each other surrept.i.tiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Sc.r.a.ps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure was due to the fact that he had not seen Angmering for so many years.

At last Mr. Prohack, his hands in his pockets, his legs stretched out, his gaze uplifted, he said suddenly:

”I suppose it'll hold water?”

”What? The roof of the car?”

”No. The will.”

Mr. Softly Bishop gave a short laugh, but made no other answer.

IV

The car halted finally before an immense new block of buildings, and the inheritors floated up to the fifth floor in a padded lift manned by a brilliantly-uniformed attendant. Mr. Prohack saw ”Smathe and Smathe” in gilt on a gla.s.s door. The enquiry office resembled the ante-room of a restaurant, as the whole building resembled a fas.h.i.+onable hotel.

Everywhere was mosaic flooring.

”Mr. Percy Smathe?” demanded Bishop of a clerk whose head glittered in the white radiance of a green-shaded lamp.

”I'll see, sir. Please step into the waiting-room.” And he waved a patronising negligent hand. ”What name?” he added.

”Have you forgotten my name already?” Mr. Bishop retorted sharply.

”Bishop. Tell Mr. Percy Smathe I'm here. At once, please.”

And he led Mr. Prohack to the waiting-room, which was a magnificent apartment with stained gla.s.s windows, furnished in Chippendale similar to, but much finer than, the furnis.h.i.+ng of Mr. Prohack's own house. On the table were newspapers and periodicals. Not _The Engineering Times_ of April in the previous year or a _Punch_ of the previous decade, and _The Vaccination Record_; but such things as the current _Tatler, Times, Economist_, and _La Vie Parisienne._

Mr. Prohack had uncomfortable qualms of apprehension. For several minutes past he had been thinking: ”Suppose there _is_ something up with that will!” He had little confidence in Mr. Softly Bishop. And now the aspect of the solicitors' office frightened him. It had happened to him, being a favourite trustee of his relations and friends, to visit the offices of some of the first legal firms in Lincoln's Inn Fields. You entered these lairs by a dirty door and a dirty corridor and another dirty door. You were interrogated by a shabby clerk who sat on a foul stool at a foul desk in a foul office. And finally after an interval in a cubby hole that could not boast even _The Anti-Vaccination Record_, you were driven along a dirtier pa.s.sage into a dirtiest room whose windows were obscured by generations of filth, and in that room sat a spick and span lawyer of great name who was probably an ex-president of the Incorporated Law Society. The offices of Smathe and Smathe corresponded with alarming closeness to Mr. Prohack's idea of what a bucket-shop might be. Mr. Prohack had the gravest fears for his hundred thousand pounds.

”This is the solicitor's office new style,” said Bishop, who seemed to have an uncanny gift of reading thoughts. ”Very big firm.

Anglo-American. Smathe and Smathe are two cousins. Percy's American.

English mother. They specialise in what I may call the international complication business, pleasant and unpleasant.”