The lawyer touched his small gray mustache and drew his hand across his smooth chin.
“The outside view is more pleasing, on the whole, than the inside.”
“Mr. Brinkerhoff, I’m a chemist I ought to be visiting a laboratory at Manchester this minute. I don’t care to be known as a real estate agent.” Mr. Brinkerhoff smiled.
“I shall not mention seeing you, and the less you say about meeting me, the better I shall like it.” They shook hands on it, and each went his way, the one to report a failure, the other to seek out a hidden lord.
When ushered into a vast and shadowy library, Marvin was briefly greeted by the secretary, an unsmiling man of forty, who glanced at his credentials and handed his bulky papers to an older person, evidently a solicitor. Two others were in the room, but he was presented to none of them. They gathered around the document he had brought, a long and complicated deed of sale.
Marvin was conducted upstairs, with a word or two suggesting that he make no reference to the war.
His lordship, clad in a silken dressing-gown, was seated in a great easy-chair, with his feet on an ottoman, a Persian shawl over them. He was a very old man, clean shaven, pale and emaciated, but his close-clipped white hair was still vigorous. Near him sat his physician, who arose as the visitor entered.
Marvin was presented. The secretary placed a chair for him and withdrew.
“Your father,” said Lord Fortinbras, “writes me that you know nothing about business.”
“My father, your lordship, is often right.”