"When can you start?" Ferrol asked.
"Next week," Humphrey said.
"You can start at three pounds a week." Ferrol pressed a button. Trinder appeared. "Ask Mr Rivers if he can come," said Ferrol.
Humphrey thought only of three pounds a week ... three pounds!
"I'll put you on the reporting staff," Ferrol remarked. Then he smiled. "We'll see how you get on...." There was a pause. (Three pounds a week! Three pounds a week!)
He looked up as the door opened and saw an extraordinarily virile-looking person come into the room—a man with the face of a refined pugilist, with large square-shaped hands and an expression of impish perkiness in his eyes.
"Come in, Rivers," said Ferrol. "This is Mr Quain."
Mr Rivers shook his hand with an air of polite restraint. "Mr Rivers is our News Editor," explained Ferrol, and then to Rivers, "I have engaged Mr Quain for a trial month, Rivers."
Rivers smiled whimsically. "You're not a genius, I hope," he said to Humphrey. The spirit of humour that flashed across Rivers's face, twinkling his eyes and the corners of his mouth and dimpling his cheeks, made Humphrey laugh a negative reply.
"That's all right," said Rivers, his face so creased in smiles until his beady eyes threatened to disappear altogether. "The last genius we had," he said, with a nod to Ferrol, "let us down horribly on the Bermondsey murder story."