The case of the Black Twenty-Two

Brian Flynn
Grosset & Dunlap
New York
First published in the United States, January, 1929
Second printing, February, 1929
Copyright, 1929, by Macrae Smith Company
The fact that it was an unusually sunny morning for an English summer day had not put Peter Daventry in the mood that it undoubtedly should have done. A riotous evening—during which he had dined not wisely but too well with a number of men who had been at Oxford with him—is not perhaps the best preparation for work on the following day, and Peter heartily cursed the relentless and inexorable fate that had made him junior partner of “Merryweather, Linnell and Daventry—Solicitors.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the window of his room, gazing disconsolately at the street below.
“Cornhill!” he muttered. “And it might be anywhere else for all it means to me, or for all I care. It’s a dull old world nowadays and devilish difficult to get thrills out of a business like this. After a night with the lads it gets me ‘on the raw’ more than ever.”
He looked down at London scurrying and hurrying. Men, women, young and old, treading their way quickly, decisively and imperturbably on the various errands and ventures that Life had chosen for them. “Poor devils!” he thought. “Day in and day out the same old grind! I sometimes wonder how they stand it. I certainly don’t know how I do.” He walked back to the chair by his desk, carefully selected a cigarette and pressed the bell.
A middle-aged, black-coated clerk appeared in the doorway.
“You rang, Mr. Daventry? You want me?”
“Oh, no, Plunkett! Not for a moment! What on earth gave you that extraordinary idea?”