A hall porter like a comic German heard his inquiry, scrutinized him with a withering glare, and jerked a thumb towards a door. He found himself in such an office as may have seen the first Rothschild make his first profits—a room austere as a chapel, rigidly confined to the needs of business. A screen, pierced by pigeon-holes, cut it in half. Experience has proved that no sum of money is too large to pass through a pigeon-hole.
"Veil?"
A whiskered, spectacled face, framed in the central pigeon-hole, with eyes magnified by the spectacles, regarded him sharply.
"Oh!" He recalled himself to his concerns with a jerk, and fumbled in his pockets. "I had a letter," he explained.
"Vere is de letter?"
He found it, after an exciting search, and passed it over. The whiskered face developed a hand to receive it.
"I don't know what it's about," explained Lucas.
"Perhaps your people have made a mistake in the name, or something."
"Our beoble," said the face in the pigeon-hole, with malignant emphasis, "do nod make mistagues!"
There was an interval while the letter was read, and Lucas stood and fidgeted, with a sense that he was intrusive and petty and undesired. "Yes," said the owner of the spectacles, at length. "You vait. I vill enguire."