“We’ll have a look and see,” said Mr. Perkins, and he began to scrutinize the accounts carefully, adding up every bill, and checking the amount of the German balance-sheet. Roland had taken a great deal of trouble over these accounts. He would not have minded making a few slips in the figures he had placed before Mr. Marston, but he was desperately anxious to present no weak spots to Perkins.
“Yes, yes,” said Perkins, “these seem to be all right, and there’s a balance, as you say, of thirteen pounds, five and threepence.”
“Right,” said Roland, and began to count out the money.
“Yes, but as far as I can see, there aren’t any—well, how shall I put it?—any special expense accounts here. I usually let one or two of them through all right.”
“No, I’ve stated what all my charges are for.”
“Well, then, aren’t there one or two little things? Usually you young gentlemen like to have a few extras put down.” And his face, that was turned to Roland’s, assumed a cunning, knowing smile, an unpleasant smile, the smile of a man in a subservient position who enjoys the privilege of being able to confer a favor on his superior, and at the same time despises his superior for asking it. Roland had known that it was in exactly this way that Perkins would offer to slip through a special expense account. He knew that by accepting this offer he would place himself eternally in Perkins’s debt. That, as in Gerald’s case, there would be between them an acknowledged confederacy. This he would never have. He had, as a matter of fact, incurred very few of the special expenses to which Perkins referred. He had worked hard; he had been alone. Solitary indulgence is never very exciting; one wants companionship, as in everything, and so he had confined his excesses to a couple of visits to a discreet establishment in Brussels, of which he had decided to defray the cost himself.
He was able, therefore, to meet Perkins’s leer with a look of puzzled interrogation.
“I don’t quite understand, Mr. Perkins. I think you’ve all my accounts there, and I owe you thirteen pounds, five shillings and threepence; perhaps you’ll give me a receipt.”
In the look that they exchanged as Mr. Perkins respectfully handed Roland the receipt, each recognized the beginning of a long antagonism.
“Thanks very much, Mr. Perkins.”