“Yes, sir.”
“Ask him if he’ll see me.”
The Bank, always quiet, seemed—that morning—like a tomb. Clerks bent over their ledgers; lights burned: but no customers waited at the iron-grilled counters, no sovereigns clinked in the brass shovels.
“Step this way, sir,” said the commissionaire.
Peter followed him across the stone floor, through the glass doorway into the manager’s parlour—soft-carpeted, lavishly furnished with dark mahogany and saddle-bag chairs.
Mr. Davis, the branch-manager, was a gray-bearded man with the clothes of a prince and the manners of a diplomat. As a West End Branch, “Pall Mall” did not seek mercantile business. They had taken the Nirvana account, officially, “to oblige their old client Mr. Jameson, whose private account they had handled for so many years.” This courtesy had not gone as far as a reduction in their usual rates of interest!
“Good morning, Mr. Jameson. I half expected you.” Mr. Davis rose; shook hands. “Won’t you take a seat?”
“Thanks. I came to ask you about the financial position. This war, you know. The papers talk about a moratorium. I understand that to mean a suspension of credit. . . .”
“Only in extreme cases, Mr. Jameson. Only in extreme cases. Of course, we are not desirous, at the moment, of increasing facilities. We are, if I may use the expression, sitting on the fence. But my directors—I have a letter from them before me now—are anxious for me to impress on all our clients, that they do not anticipate any financial crisis. Measures, as I am given to believe, have been taken; temporary expedients adopted; by which. . . .” He went on to explain them, at some length.
“Then I take it,” said Peter, “that on the resumption of banking-business. . . .”