Once upon a time there was a very rich gentleman named Sir Franklin Ingleside, who lived all alone in a beautiful house in Berkeley Square. He was so rich that he could not possibly spend more than a little of his money, although he gave great sums away, and had horses and carriages, and bought old pictures and new books.
He lived very quietly, rode a little, drove a little, called on old friends (chiefly old ladies), usually dined alone, and afterwards read by the fire.
Although the house was large and full of servants, all Sir Franklin’s wants were supplied by his own particular man, Pembroke. Pembroke was clean-shaven, very neat, spoke quietly, and never grew any older or seemed ever to have been any younger. It was impossible to think of Pembroke as a baby, or a boy, or a person with a Christian name. One could think of him only as a grave man named Pembroke. No one ever saw him smile in Berkeley Square, but a page boy once came home with the news that he had passed Mr. Pembroke talking to a man in the street at Islington, and heard him laugh out loud. But page boys like inventing impossible stories, and making your flesh creep.
Pembroke lived in a little room communicating by bells with all the rooms which Sir Franklin used; so that whenever the bell rang Pembroke knew exactly where his master was. Pembroke did not seem to have any life but his master’s; and the one thing about which he was always thinking was how to know beforehand exactly what his master wanted. Pembroke became so clever at this that he would often, after being rung for, enter the room carrying the very thing that Sir Franklin was going to request him to get.
Sir Franklin once asked him how he did it, and Pembroke said that he did not know; but part of the secret was explained that very year quite by chance. It was like this. In the autumn Sir Franklin and Pembroke always went to Scotland, and that year when they were in Scotland the Berkeley Square house was done up and all the old pull-bells were taken away and new electric ones were put in instead. When Sir Franklin came back again he noticed that Pembroke was not nearly so clever in anticipating needs as he had been before; and when he asked him about it, Pembroke said: “My opinion, sir, is that it’s all along of the bells. The new bells, which you press, ring the same, however you press them, and startle a body too, whereas the old bells, which you used to pull, sir, told me what you wanted by the way you pulled them, and never startled one at all.”
So Sir Franklin and Pembroke went to Paris for a week while the new press bells were taken away and the old pull-bells put back again, and then Pembroke became again just as clever as before. (But that was, of course, only part of the secret.)
II
It was at a quarter to nine on the evening of December 18, 1907, that Sir Franklin, who was sitting by the fire reading and thinking, suddenly got up and rang the bell.
Pembroke came in at once and said, “I’m sorry you’re troubled in your mind, sir. Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Sir Franklin. “But do you know what day this is?”