Mr Raphael Colfox had his offices in a dull stuccoed block of building that neighboured on the north-east corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here, high up, he laid his web for the hard-pressed flies that always came buzzing in plenty about that legal honey-pot. Gilead, being brought in to him by way of a dismal little ante-den, smelling of damp ledgers and having a shrewd anæmic child in it for clerk, found his gentleman a genial strong-voiced figure of sixty or so, with stubby white eyebrows, stubby white moustache, and white hair brushed forward of his ears at the temples. He wore a full grass-green bow at his neck, his frock coat bulged a little in the waist, and the only spot of colour in his face was supplied by his nose, which was somewhat shapeless and inflamed and sown with short white hairs.
“And now, sir,” said he, after some brief preliminaries, “what can we do for you?”
Gilead’s natural repugnance for the fellow made him a little short in his answers. His own clear candour never took such offence as it did at those who, experience told him, would be ready to flout him unknown, and to lick his plutocratic boots were he to reveal himself. He had no mercy on such toadeaters, and found any dissimulation, even for the best ends, difficult in their presence.
“That remains to see, sir,” he said. “Nothing, I may premise, in the way of loans or accommodations.”
“Not?”
Mr Colfox, sitting back at his ease, raised his eyebrows and nothing else.
“I will come to the point at once,” said Gilead. “I am something of a collector, a virtuoso, and I am told that you possess works, which you may not be unwilling to sell, by the late Auguste Lerroux.”
The moneylender pricked up his ears. Here, for the first time, was shadowing itself out a justification of his foresight. His nerve of cupidity thrilled. He must make the best of this chance.
He nodded his head agreeably.
“You are told,” he said. “May I ask by whom?”