That they were so failing was plain.  Scarcely had one scarred victim of London’s unkindness passed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, “Next!” and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed a moment later by yet another.  The one fact at present ascertainable concerning the unknown searcher for reckless young men of good appearance was that he appeared to be possessed of considerable decision of character, a man who did not take long to make up his mind.  He was rejecting applicants now at the rate of two a minute.

Expeditious though he was, he kept Ashe waiting for a considerable time.  It was not until the hands of the fat clock over the door pointed to twenty minutes past eleven that the office boy’s “Next!” found him the only survivor.  He gave his clothes a hasty smack with the palm of his hand and his hair a fleeting dab to accentuate his good appearance, and turned the handle of the door of fate.

The room assigned by the firm to their Mr. Boole for his personal use was a small and dingy compartment, redolent of that atmosphere of desolation which lawyers alone know how to achieve.  It gave the impression of not having been swept since the foundation of the firm, in the year 1786.  There was one small window, covered with grime.  It was one of those windows you see only in lawyers’ offices.  Possibly some reckless Mainprice or harebrained Boole had opened it in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, and had been instantly expelled from the firm.  Since then, no one had dared to tamper with it.

Gazing through this window—­or, rather, gazing at it, for X-rays could hardly have succeeded in actually penetrating the alluvial deposits on the glass—­was a little man.  As Ashe entered, he turned and looked at him as though he hurt him rather badly in some tender spot.

Ashe was obliged to own to himself that he felt a little nervous.  It is not every day that a young man of good appearance, who has led a quiet life, meets face to face one who is prepared to pay him well for doing something delicate and dangerous.  To Ashe the sensation was entirely novel.  The most delicate and dangerous act he had performed to date had been the daily mastication of Mrs. Bell’s breakfast—­included in the rent.  Yes, he had to admit it—­he was nervous:  and the fact that he was nervous made him hot and uncomfortable.

To judge him by his appearance, the man at the window was also hot and uncomfortable.  He was a little, truculent-looking man, and his face at present was red with a flush that sat unnaturally on a normally lead-colored face.  His eyes looked out from under thick gray eyebrows with an almost tortured expression.  This was partly owing to the strain of interviewing Ashe’s preposterous predecessors, but principally to the fact that the little man had suddenly been seized with acute indigestion, a malady to which he was peculiarly subject.