He paused, and the three culprits were beginning to cool down and congratulate themselves, when he began again.

“You will see, Mr. Gilray, that this deduction is made,” he said, “and at the same time I beg that you will deduct ten shillings from your own salary, since, as senior clerk, the responsibility of keeping order in this room in the absence of your employers rests with you, and you appear to have neglected it.  I trust you will look to this, Mr. Gilray.”

“Yes, sir,” the senior clerk answered meekly.  He was an elderly man with a large family, and the lost ten shillings would make a difference to the Sunday dinner.  There was nothing for it but to bow to the inevitable, and his little pinched face assumed an expression of gentle resignation.  How to keep his ten young subordinates in order, however, was a problem which vexed him sorely.

The junior partner was silent, and the remaining clerks were working uneasily, not exactly knowing whether they might not presently be included in the indictment.  Their fears were terminated, however, by the sharp sound of a table-gong and the appearance of a boy with the announcement that Mr. Girdlestone would like a moment’s conversation with Mr. Ezra.  The latter gave a keen glance at his subjects and withdrew into the back office, a disappearance which was hailed by ten pens being thrown into the air and deftly caught again, while as many derisive and triumphant young men mocked at the imploring efforts of old Gilray in the interests of law and order.

The sanctum of Mr. John Girdlestone was approached by two doors, one of oak with ground-glass panels, and the other covered with green baize.  The room itself was small, but lofty, and the walls were ornamented by numerous sections of ships stuck upon long flat boards, very much as the remains of fossil fish are exhibited in museums, together with maps, charts, photographs, and lists of sailings innumerable.  Above the fire-place was a large water-colour painting of the barque Belinda as she appeared when on a reef to the north of Cape Palmas.  An inscription beneath this work of art announced that it had been painted by the second officer and presented by him to the head of the firm.  It was generally rumoured that the merchants had lost heavily over this disaster, and there were some who quoted it as an instance of Girdlestone’s habitual strength of mind that he should decorate his wall with so melancholy a souvenir.  This view of the matter did not appear to commend itself to a flippant member of Lloyd’s agency, who contrived to intimate, by a dexterous use of his left eyelid and right forefinger, that the vessel may not have been so much under-insured, nor the loss to the firm so enormous as was commonly reported.