"Don't be in such a beastly hurry. Sit down."
"No, thanks."
"Alright. In case of a rumpus, the first man to go overboard would be Winter, poor little helpless Winter. He was rushed into the council because he was a fool, he accepted a five-pound note because he was a thundering fool, and his wife was ill and the kids hadn't got togs, and because everybody else was having five-pound notes. He'd be the first sacrifice. Poor old Winter, he looks like a thief; really, he's got a better (or worse) conscience than a nonconformist minister; that five pounds has pulled him down astonishingly, I've watched him wither away. And his kids, poor little mites! All through nature one observes that the small units increase at an astonishingly high ratio. He only got one five quid."
Carstairs was silent as a carven image.
"You're damned hard, you know, Carstairs. Then there's the contractor's man there. He'd get the bullet, and two or three fitters also. Possibly a clerk or two and my chief assistant would go to quod, even the honest and highly virtuous Mr Carstairs, son of the vicar of Chilcombe, who would die, with his wife, broken-hearted."
"That'll do, Darwen. I'll go and see Dr Jameson and a solicitor at once."
"Carstairs, the mater's taken a fancy to you, and I'll admit you appeal to me more than any man I've ever met. So damned ponderous. Your moment of inertia must be simply enormous. Isn't it possible to save you in your own despite." He touched an electric bell. An office boy appeared.
"Ask Mr Slick if he'll come up here a minute, will you, please." Darwen was invariably excessively polite, even to the minutest and most sub-divided portions of humanity.
"Slick and I will endeavour to show you, Carstairs, that you've got 'no case,' as I believe they say in law."
Mr Slick appeared.