I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there was usually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough, shaggy coat and the suggestion of collie blood about him—though he was plainly a mixture of several breeds—Bim belonged to Brown, and to Brown's immediate environment, whenever Bim himself was able to accomplish it. When he was not able he was accustomed to wait patiently outside the door of Brown's small bachelor abode. This door opened directly from the street into the Brown Study.
The really curious thing about the study was that nobody in that quarter of the big city knew it was a study. They called the place simply "Brown's." Who Brown himself was they did not know, either. He had come to live in the little old house about a year ago. He was dressed so plainly, and everything about him, including his manner, was of such an unobtrusive simplicity, that he attracted little attention—at first. Soon his immediate neighbours were on terms of interested acquaintanceship with him, though how they got there they could not themselves have told—it had never occurred to them to wonder. The thing had come about naturally, somehow. Presently others besides his immediate neighbours knew Brown, had become friends of Brown. They never wondered how it had happened.
The Brown Study had many callers. It was by now thoroughly used to them, for it had all sorts, every day of the month, at any hour of the day, at almost any hour of the night.
II
BROWN'S CALLER—ONE OF MANY
A caller had just come stumbling in out of the November murk, half blind with weariness and unhappiness and general discouragement. Brown had welcomed him heartily.
"It's nothing in particular," growled the other man, presently, "and it's everything. I'm down and out."
"Lost your job?"
"No, but I'm going to lose it."
"How do you know?"