Mr. Cantle put his pen in his mouth, blotted what he had been at work on, examined it cursorily but surely, rose, walked to the counter, and presented a form to the petitioner, all something with the air of a passionless police-inspector. He was a tall young man, loose-limbed, and with all his hardness, like a melancholy Punch’s show character, in his head. Much converse with cranks had engendered in him an air of perpetual unspoken protest, of exasperated resignation. For he was a trusted clerk in the office of the Commissioners of Patents for Inventions.
“Exactly,” he mumbled over the goose-quill. “Thats a matter for your provisional specification. Good morning.”
“It’s the most wonderful——”
“Of course—they all are. Good morning.”
“It will revolutionize——”
“Naturally. You will make your petition and declaration in the proper forms. Good morning.”
The inventor essayed another effort or two, met with no response, quavered out a sigh, packed up his treasure and vanished. The sound of his exit neither relaxed nor deepened a wrinkle on the brow of the neatly groomed Government official. He simply went on with his work.
At half-past one o’clock, it being Saturday, he—we were going to say “knocked off,” but the expression would be a libel on his methodical refinement. He took a hansom—selecting a personably horsed one—to his chambers in Adelphi Terrace; lunched off four pâté de foie gras sandwiches, already awaiting him under a silver cover, and a glass of chablis; changed his dress for a river suit of sober-tinted flannel and a Panama hat; charged himself with a morocco handbag, also ready prepared; drove to Waterloo, and took a first-class ticket, and the train—he favoured the South-Western because it was the quieter line of two in this connexion—to Windsor. Arrived there, he was hailed and joined by a friend on the platform.
“Glad you’re come, Ned. I’m off colour a bit. You never are.”
It was hardly an attractive reception. Mr. Cantle glanced interrogatively at his companion, the Honourable Ivo Monk, son of Lord Prior.