me yet.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Lancelot,” Mrs.
Hardcastle apologised, “this is the first time,
I think, you’ve been to the office?”
“The first time but not the last,” said
Lance, smiling.
He crossed the room and opened the door
of what had been his father’s private office.
Somewhat to his surprise it was not Percival
who was sitting behind the desk there, but
Inspector Neele. Inspector Neele looked up
from a large wad of papers which he was sorting,
and nodded his head.
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“Good morning, Mr. Fortescue, you’ve
come to take up your duties, I suppose.”
“So you’ve heard I decided to come into
the firm?”
“Your brother told me so.”
“He did, did he? With enthusiasm?”
Inspector Neele endeavoured to conceal a
smile.
“The enthusiasm was not marked,” he said
gravely.
“Poor Percy,” commented Lance.
Inspector Neele looked at him curiously.
“Are you really going to become a City
man?”
“You don’t think it’s likely. Inspector
Neele?”
“It doesn’t seem quite in character, Mr.
Fortescue.”
“Why not? I’m my father’s son.”
“And your mother’s.”
Lance shook his head.
“You haven’t got anything there. Inspector.
My mother was a Victorian romantic. Her
favourite reading was the Idylls of the King, as
indeed you may have deduced from our
curious Christian names. She was an invalid
and always, I should imagine, out of touch
with reality. I’m not like that at all. I have no
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sentiment, very little sense of romance and
I’m a realist first and last.”
“People aren’t always what they think
themselves to be,” Inspector Neele pointed
out.
“No, I suppose that’s true,” said Lance.
He sat down in a chair and stretched his
long legs out in his own characteristic
fashion. He was smiling to himself. Then he
said unexpectedly:
“You’re shrewder than my brother,
Inspector.”
“In what way, Mr. Fortescue?”
“I’ve put the wind up Percy all right. He
thinks I’m all set for the City life. He thinks
he’s going to have my fingers fiddling about
in his pie. He thinks I’ll launch out and spend the firm’s money and try and embroil him in
wildcat schemes. It would be almost worth
doing just for the fun of it! Almost, but not
quite. I couldn’t really stand an office life, Inspector. I like the open air and some possibilities
of adventure. I’d stifle in a place like
this.” He added quickly, “This is off the
record, mind. Don’t give me away to Percy, will you?”
“I don’t suppose the subject will arise, Mr.
Fortescue.”
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“I must have my bit of fun with Percy,”
said Lance. “I want to make him sweat a bit.
I’ve got to get a bit of my own back.”
“That’s rather a curious phrase, Mr.
Fortescue,” said Neele. “Your own back—for
what?”
Lance shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, it’s old history now. Not worth going
back over.”
“There was a little matter of a cheque, I
understand, in the past. Would that be what
you’re referring to?”
“How much you know. Inspector!”
“There was no question of prosecution, I
understand,” said Neele. “Your father
wouldn’t have done that.”
“No. He just kicked me out, that’s all.”
Inspector Neele eyed him speculatively,
but it was not Lance Fortescue of whom he
was thinking, but of Percival. The honest,
industrious, parsimonious Percival. It
seemed to him that wherever he got in the
case he was always coming up against the
enigma of Percival Fortescue, a man of whom
everybody knew the outer aspects, but whose
inner personality was much harder to gauge.
One would have said from observing him, a
somewhat colourless and insignificant
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character, a man who had been very much
under his father’s thumb. Percy Prim in fact,
as the A.C. had once said. Neele was trying
now, through Lance, to get at a closer
appreciation of Percival’s personality. He
murmured in a tentative manner:
“Your brother seems always to have been
very much—well, how shall I put it—under
your father’s thumb.”
“I wonder.” Lance seemed definitely to be
considering the point. “I wonder. Yes, that
would be the effect, I think, given. But I’m
not sure that it was really the truth. It’s
astonishing, you know, when I look back