“Since that was so plainly your duty,” I said, “I can only regret your tardy perception of it.”
It will thus be seen that, harassed as I was by the problem provided for me by Ezekiel Stool, I was now confronted with the much more immediate one of purging Mr. Lorton’s business of Mr. Archibald Maidstone. For to me at any rate it was imperatively clear that such a person could not possibly remain in it without imperilling the whole of the spiritual prestige that was perhaps its most lucrative asset. At the same time, however, as I also saw, the preliminaries to expulsion would require very careful handling, owing to the choleric temper, the extreme vanity, and the peculiar limitations of Mr. Chrysostom himself.
After what can well be imagined, therefore, was a restless night, and not without the profoundest consideration, I decided upon the seat of my Sunday trousers as the best introduction to the subject in hand; and it was with this in view that I refrained from dusting or drying them and carried them to the city with me the next morning.
Nor was I disappointed. For not only did Miss Botterill, my female inferior, visibly recoil from them, but they instantly caught the eye of Mr. Chrysostom Lorton as he crossed the show-room on the way to his office. Indeed, disposed as they were, with the seat uppermost, upon one corner of the right-hand counter, it would have been difficult for even the most preoccupied to have passed them without notice, and especially as the moisture that had been transferred to them from the pavement was now being illuminated by the morning sun. Nor was the effect of them upon Mr. Chrysostom Lorton less than it had been upon Miss Botterill. Starting back, almost as if he had been lassoed, he stood for a moment staring at them with dilated pupils, and then very softly he approached them on tip-toe with the point of his umbrella extended before him.
“Good God,” he said, “whose are those?”
With an appropriate gesture I signified their ownership. He turned to Miss Botterill.
“Fetch me a chair,” he said.
She pushed one towards him with averted eyes. He fell back into it and waved his hand.
“Take them away,” he said. “Put them somewhere else.”
I removed them from the counter and placed them underneath it.