"Suppose we drop your father at the Cabaret while we go on to see my offices?"
"Offices—at night-time!" she exclaimed.
"My staff work all night there—I have a night-shift as well as a day-shift. In fact, the offices are busier at night-time than in the day-time."
"Isn't that a very unusual arrangement?"
"Yes. It enables me to deal with routine-work while the other fellow's asleep. That's always been one of my business principles: get to-morrow's work done to-day; get a twelve hours' start of the other man."
"How typical of you!"
"My place is thoroughly worth seeing. Suppose I show you over it?"
Larssen's pride in his office was fully justified. There was nothing in London, nothing in England to match it as a perfect business machine. And there was no private office in Europe which could compare in impressiveness with Larssen's own.
Things went as he arranged, and from the busy hive of industry on the ground and first floors he took Olive to his private room on the second. It was a room some thirty yards long and broad in proportion, with a central dome reaching above the roof. A few broad tables were almost lost in its immensity. Round the walls were maps dotted with flag-pins telling of the position of ships. At the further end was Larssen's own work-table—a horseshoe-shaped desk. Above and behind it hung a portrait of his little boy by Sargent.
"It's almost a throne-room!" was Olive's exclamation of wonder.