His reputation for tact and delicacy is tremendous; and yet those who have found themselves opposed to him have never been long in realising that there was a most redoubtable mailed fist under the velvet glove. Altogether a remarkable man, whose memoirs would make absorbing reading, could he be persuaded to write them—which is quite beyond the bounds of possibility. I had never met him either professionally or personally, and it was with some eagerness that I told the office-boy to show him in at once.
Sereno Hornblower did not look the part. His reputation led one to expect a sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Sherlock Holmes, but there was nothing secretive or insinuating about his appearance. He was a bluff and hearty man of middle age, rather heavy-set, fresh-faced and clean-shaven, and with very bright blue eyes—evidently a man with a good digestion and a comfortable conscience. Had I met him on Broadway, I should have taken him for a ripe and finished comedian. There was about him an air which somehow reminded me of Joseph Jefferson—perhaps it was his bright blue eyes. It may have been this very appearance of bluff sincerity and honest downrightness which accounted for his success.
We shook hands, and he sat down and plunged at once, without an instant's hesitation, into the business which had brought him. Looking back at it, understanding as I do now the delicate nature of that business, I admire more and more that bluff readiness; though the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that he had thought out definitely beforehand precisely what he was going to say. The man who can carry through a carefully premeditated scene with an air of complete unpremeditation has an immense advantage.
"Mr. Lester," he began, "I understand that you are the administrator of the estate of the late Philip Vantine?"
"Our firm is," I corrected.
"But you, personally, have been attending to his business?"
"Yes."
"He was a collector of old furniture, I believe?"
"Yes."
"And on his last trip to Europe, from which he returned only a few days ago, he purchased of Armand & Son, of Paris, a Boule cabinet?"