"I can see now what's been keeping you in Paris!" he added facetiously, and, having shaken hands with Slyne, who seemed to think that superfluous, turned to receive Captain Dove with the same politeness.
"Phew!" whistled Mr. Jobling and drew back and stared at the old man. "I'd never have recognised you in that rig-out."
Captain Dove pulled off a pair of smoked glasses he had been wearing, the better to look him, with offensive intent, in his injured eye. For Captain Dove was still enduring much mental as well as physical discomfort in a disguise which he had only been induced to adopt a couple of days before, and after an embittered quarrel with Slyne. The stiff white collar round his corded neck was still threatening to choke him and then cut his throat. He had been infinitely more at his ease in his scanty, short-tailed frock-coat and furry top-hat than he was in the somewhat baggy if more becoming black garb he had donned in its place, with a soft wide-awake always flapping about his ears.
"Come inside," Mr. Jobling begged hurriedly, and, looking round as he followed them into his sanctum, "Mullins!" he snapped, "don't stand there staring. Get on with your work, at once.
"You're later than I expected," he remarked to Slyne as he closed the door, "but just in time. The Court's closed, of course, for the Christmas vacation, but I've filed an application for a hearing in Chambers, and—"
He paused as a telephone-bell rang shrilly outside, and a moment later the shock head of his "managing clerk" protruded into the room, almost as if it did not belong to a body at all.
"Mr. Spettigrew says that our application in Chambers will be heard by Mr. Justice Gaunt, in 57B, at eleven-thirty sharp this forenoon," announced that youth and, with a final wriggle of his long neck, withdrew.
"Devil take him!" exclaimed Captain Dove, somewhat startled and much incensed. "I wouldn't keep a crested cobra like that about me for—"
"Let's see those accounts of yours, now," said Slyne, disregarding that interruption, and Mr. Jobling, having first looked at his watch, produced from another drawer a great sheaf of papers, all carefully docketed. He slipped off the top one and somewhat reluctantly handed that to his friend.
Slyne took it from him eagerly, and sat for a time gloating over it with eyes which presently began to glow.