“I have come in ans–” he began, to the diminutive office boy, who seemed to be the nearest thing visible to a Mainprice or a Boole.
“Siddown. Gottatakeyerturn,” said the office boy; and for the first time Ashe perceived that the ante-room in which he stood was crowded to overflowing.
This, in the circumstances, was something of a damper. He had pictured himself, during his ride in the cab, striding into the office and saying. “The delicate and dangerous enterprise. Lead me to it!” He had not realized until now that he was not the only man in London who, read the advertisement columns of the Morning Post, and for an instant his heart sank at the sight of all this competition. A second and more comprehensive glance at his rivals gave him confidence.
The Wanted column of the morning paper is a sort of dredger, which churns up strange creatures from the mud of London’s underworld. Only in response to the dredger’s operations do they come to the surface in such numbers as to be noticeable, for as a rule they are of a solitary habit and shun company; but when they do come they bring with them something of the horror of the depths.
It is the saddest spectacle in the world–that of the crowd collected by a Wanted advertisement. They are so palpably not wanted by anyone for any purpose whatsoever; yet every time they gather together with a sort of hopeful hopelessness. What they were originally–the units of these collections–Heaven knows. Fate has battered out of them every trace of individuality. Each now is exactly like his neighbor–no worse; no better.
Ashe, as he sat and watched them, was filled with conflicting emotions. One-half of him, thrilled with the glamour of adventure, was chafing at the delay, and resentful of these poor creatures as of so many obstacles to the beginning of all the brisk and exciting things that lay behind the mysterious brevity of the advertisement; the other, pitifully alive to the tragedy of the occasion, was grateful for the delay.
On the whole, he was glad to feel that if one of these derelicts did not secure the “good pay for the right man,” it would not be his fault. He had been the last to arrive, and he would be the last to pass through that door, which was the gateway of adventure the door with Mr. Boole inscribed on its ground glass, behind which sat the author of the mysterious request for assistance, interviewing applicants. It would be through their own shortcomings–not because of his superior attractions–if they failed to please that unseen arbiter.
That they were so failing was plain. Scarcely had one scarred victim of London’s unkindness passed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, “Next!” and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed a moment later by yet another. The one fact at present ascertainable concerning the unknown searcher for reckless young men of good appearance was that he appeared to he possessed of considerable decision of character, a man who did not take long to make up his mind. He was rejecting applicants now at the rate of two a minute.
Expeditious though he was, he kept Ashe waiting for a considerable time. It was not until the hands of the fat clock over the door pointed to twenty minutes past eleven that the office boy’s “Next!” found him the only survivor. He gave his clothes a hasty smack with the palm of his hand and his hair a fleeting dab to accentuate his good appearance, and turned the handle of the door of fate.
The room assigned by the firm to their Mr. Boole for his personal use was a small and dingy compartment, redolent of that atmosphere of desolation which lawyers alone know how to achieve. It gave the impression of not having been swept since the foundation of the firm, in the year 1786. There was one small window, covered with grime. It was one of those windows you see only in lawyers’ offices. Possibly some reckless Mainprice or harebrained Boole had opened it in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, and had been instantly expelled from the firm. Since then, no one had dared to tamper with it.