CHAPTER ONE
Certain Reflections in the Mirror
"Humph," said H. M., "so you're my nephew, hey?" He continued to peer morosely over the tops of his glasses, his mouth turned down sourly and his big hands folded over his big stomach. His swivel chair squeaked behind the desk. He sniffed. 'Well, have a cigar, then. And some whisky. - What's so blasted funny, hey? You got a cheek, you have. What're you grinnin' at, curse you?"
The nephew of Sir Henry Merrivale had come very close to laughing in Sir Henry Merrivale's face. It was, unfortunately, the way nearly everybody treated the great H. M., including all his subordinates at the War Office, and this was a very sore point with him. Mr. James Boynton Bennett could not help knowing it. When you are a young man just arrived from over the water, and you sit for the first time in the office of an eminent uncle who once managed all the sleight-of-hand known as the British Military Intelligence Department, then some little tact is indicated. H. M., although largely ornamental in these slack days, still worked a few wires. There was sport, and often danger, that came out of an unsettled Europe. Bennett's father, who was H. M.'s brother-in-law and enough of a somebody at Washington to know, had given him some extra-family hints before Bennett sailed.
"Don't," said the elder Bennett, "don't, under any circumstances, use any ceremony with him. He wouldn't understand it. He has frequently got into trouble at political meetings by making speeches in which he absent-mindedly refers to their Home Secretary as Boko and their Premier as Horse face. You will probably find him asleep, although he will pretend he is very busy. His favorite delusion is that he is being persecuted, and that nobody appreciates him. His baronetcy is two or three hundred years old, and he is also a fighting Socialist. He is a qualified barrister and physician, and he speaks the world's most slovenly grammar. His mind is scurrilous; he shocks lady typists, wears white socks, and appears in public without his necktie. Don't be deceived by his looks; he likes to think he is as expressionless as a Buddha and as sour-faced as Scrooge. I may add," said the elder Bennett, "that at criminal investigation he is a good deal of a genius."
What surprised Sir Henry Merrivale's nephew was that he fulfilled the description exactly. Two hundred pounds of him were piled into a chair behind the big untidy desk, wheezing and grumbling. His big bald head showed against the window of the dingy room, high up and quiet above the bustle of the War Office. H. M.'s room, spacious in decayed finery, is in the most ancient part of the damp old rabbit-warren, once a part of Whitehall Palace: it looks down over a bleak strip of garden, the Victoria Embankment, and the river. A smoky blue twilight the frosty twilight of Christmas week — blurred the window now. Bennett could see reflections from the lamps along the parapet of the Embankment; he could hear the window rattle to the pelting and hooting of buses, and the stir of the fire under the battered white-marble mantelpiece. Except for the fire, there was no light. H. M. sat morosely, his glasses pulled down on his thick nose, blinking. Just over his head there hung from the chandelier a large red-paper Christmas bell.
"Ah!" growled H. J., peering at him with sudden suspicion. "I see you lookin' at it, young man. Don't think I hang things like that all around my room. But I never count for anything. That's the way they treat me around here. That's Lollypop's work."
"Lollypop?" said Bennett.
"Secretary," growled H. M. "Good girl, but a pest. She's always got me talkin' on the telephone when I give her strict orders I'm busy. I'm always busy. Bah. But she puts flowers on my desk, and hangs bells all about.
"Well, sir," observed Bennett reasonably, "if you don't like it, why don't you take it down?"