Chapter Eighteen.
The Outsider.
On the left-hand side of Old Broad Street, City, passing from the Royal Exchange to Liverpool Street Station, stands a dark and dingy building, with a row of four windows looking upon the street. On a dull day, when the green-shaded lamps are lit within, the passer-by catches glimpses of rows of clerks, seated at desks poring over ledgers. At the counter is a continual coming and going of clerks and messengers, and notes and gold are received in and paid out constantly until the clock strikes four. Then the big, old doors are closed, and upon them is seen a brass plate, with the lettering almost worn off by continual polishing, bearing the words “Statham Brothers.”
Beyond the counter, through a small wicket, is the manager’s room—large, but gloomy, screened from the public view, and lit summer and winter by artificial light. In a corner is a safe for books, and at either end big writing-tables.
In that sombre room “deals” representing thousands upon thousands were often made, and through its door, alas! many a man who, finding himself pressed, had gone to the firm for financial aid and been refused, had walked out a bankrupt and ruined.
Beyond the manager’s room was a narrow, dark passage, at the end of which was a door marked “Private,” and within that private room, punctually at eleven o’clock, three mornings after Rolfe’s conversation with Macgregor, old Sam Statham took his seat in the shabby writing-chair, from which the stuffing protruded.
About the great financier’s private room there was nothing palatial. It was so dark that artificial light had to be used always. The desk was an old-fashioned mahogany one of the style of half a century ago, a threadbare carpet, two or three old horsehair chairs, and upon the green-painted wall a big date-calendar such as bankers usually use, while beneath it was a card, printed with old Sam’s motto:—
“TIME FLIES; DEATH URGES.”
That same motto was over every clerk’s desk, and, because of it, some wag had dubbed the great financier, “Death-head Statham.”