“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 glass windows, furnished in Chippendale similar to, but much finer than, the furnishing 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 passage 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.”

Mr. Prohack was not appreciably reassured.  Then a dapper, youngish man with a carnation in his buttonhole stepped neatly into the room, and greeted Bishop in a marked American accent.

“Here I am again,” said Bishop curtly.  “Mr. Prohack, may I introduce Mr. Percy Smathe?”

“Mr. Prohack, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

Mr. Prohack beheld the lawyer’s candid, honest face, heard his tones of extreme deference, and noted that he had come to the enquiry room to fetch his clients.

“There’s only one explanation of this,” said Mr. Prohack to himself.  “I’m a genuinely wealthy person.”