All immensely vulgar, no doubt; yet, to a disinterested observer, immensely suggestive.
CHAPTER III.
FOR MERCIES VOUCHSAFED.
For once, however, Mr. Asherill was in earnest. Knowing what liquidation meant to the debtor and the creditors (he had grasped its meaning thoroughly before deciding to make his living out of it) he did think it a sad thing Mortomley should liquidate. He did not wish to disoblige Mr. Forde; and yet having gauged that gentleman and the people with whom he was most intimately connected, he felt no wild desire to mell or meddle in any affair of theirs.
For no bait Mr. Kleinwort could hold out would this man have mixed himself up with an affair he, for some reason, considered so doubtful as Mortomley's,—with a business in which he saw there lay, to quote his own mental phrase, something so "fishy" as the conjunction of Kleinwort, Werner, and Forde.
Mr. Asherill did not believe in the stars; but he was sufficiently superstitious to feel satisfied so astounding a terrestrial phenomenon as that mentioned must portend approaching calamity to more than one person.
"It will end badly, I fear," he said mentally. "I hope, I do hope, Swanland will be careful. After all, the estate can prove only a poor thing, not worth the risk."
Perhaps the weather had some share in producing these misgivings,—a steady downfall of rain, a dull yellow sky, the water pouring into the gutters, and the streets and side-paths thick and slippery with mud, are not stimulants to cheerful reflection; but possibly the fact that Mr. Asherill had not grown younger with the years may be considered as having more to do with his depression than even the wet misery of that especial Saturday.
The old head we are taught to consider so desirable, Mr. Asherill possessed, but, alas! it no longer surmounted young shoulders.
Mr. Swanland was waiting the return of his partner. The clerks had all gone, the books were put away, the safes locked up, the offices throughout the whole of the building closed, save alone that in the gallery, occupied by Messrs. Asherill and Swanland, which was the private temple of the senior partner.