Mr Brandsheim was at home, and was ushered into his presence, to find him a dark, yellow-looking man with a wrinkled face and very keen eyes. He quite startled me for the moment, for, though not in personal appearance in the slightest degree resembling Mr Blakeford, there was a something about him that suggested that worthy and his ways.
He was dressed in the first style of fashion, a little exaggerated. He might have been a slave of the great Plutus himself, for round his neck and lashing his chest was a thick gold chain; diamond rings were on the fingers of each hand; a great opal and diamond pin was in his black satin stock; at his wrists were jewelled sleeve-links that glistened and sparkled when he moved. There was nothing sordid about him, for he sat in an easy-chair at a polished secretary; there was a Turkey carpet beneath his feet, and the furniture of the room was massive and good; but, all the same, I had no sooner entered the place than I began to think of Mr Blakeford and Mr Wooster, and I involuntarily wondered whether this man could be in any way connected with my late employer, and whether I had unconsciously walked into a trap.
As my eyes wandered about the room in search of tin boxes containing different people’s affairs, of dusty parchments and sale bills, I felt better; for they were all absent. In their place were large oil pictures against the walls, hung, and leaning back, resting on the floor. On a sideboard was a row of little stoppered bottles with labels hanging from their necks in a jaunty fashion, and in the bottles were richly tinted liquids—topaz, ruby, purple, and gold. They might have been medicines, but they looked like wines, and I felt sure they were, as I saw piled upon the floor some dozens of cigar-boxes.
Mr Brandsheim might have been a picture dealer, a wine merchant, or an importer of cigars, for in those days I had yet to learn that he was a bill-discounter who contrived that his clients should have so much in cash for an acceptance, and the rest in old masters, Whitechapel Havanas, and Hambro-Spanish wines.
Mr Brandsheim’s words somewhat reassured me, as he nodded pleasantly to me and smiled.
“Sit down, my man,” he said; “sit down, and I’ll soon be ready for you. Let me see—let me see.”
He busied himself behind his secretary, rustling papers and making notes, and now and then looking at me and tapping his teeth with a heavy gold pencil-case, while I furtively watched him and wondered how he managed to make his jet black hair so shiny, and why it was he spoke as if he had been poking cottonwool up his nose, till it suddenly occurred to me that he must be a German.
“Ah!” he said, at last; “let me see—let me see—let me see—see—see. Mr Lister quite well?”
“Yes, sir; quite well, thank you.”