As the business happened about that time to be doing about as badly as it could, it had been deemed expedient to spend a considerable sum of money in renovating the premises; and the varnish and the polish, and the newly-laid carpets and the sticky oil-cloths in and leading to the manager's office were parts of the result.
So long as the precipice was fringed with flowers, the manager could not realize it hung over an abyss, and he therefore, on the afternoon in question, sat before his table writing with a marvellous serenity, though he had that day received two warnings of evil to come that might well have shaken a braver and wiser man.
But they were over. To a certain extent Mr. Swanland had been right when he said, "Forde is mentally short-sighted," but he would have proved a more correct delineator of character had he styled him, "wilfully short-sighted."
The natural sequence of events Mr. Forde utterly declined to study; in the chapter of accidents he was as much at home as in the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange.
Still two alarming events had occurred that day—first, a new director had given him to understand he intended personally to examine the accounts and securities of three customers whose solvency he doubted.
Amongst the directors, however, disunion meant safety to the manager; and as no two of them ever agreed, Mr. Forde had found it a matter of little difficulty to set the whole of them so utterly by the ears on some utterly unimportant point that the unsatisfactory clients were for the time forgotten.
Still Mr. Forde knew that the subject must crop up again sooner or later, and he meant to lead the tardy debtors a weary life until "he had something tangible to show his directors."
The second matter was more serious. After the last of his directors had left, a gentleman tall, dignified, and elderly, inquired in the outer office if he could speak to Mr. Forde.
"Certainly not," Mr. Forde said in answer to the clerk who asked if he were at liberty, "I can see no one at present."
Mr. Forde was not engaged in any matter of the slightest importance, but this was one of his devices for maintaining the dignity of position.