Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/8

 narrow paved alley into the quiet recesses of Gray's Inn, with its dusty passages and old houses huddled together, like old, grey, staring faces in rows. Among them I went looking for Mr. Trusibond's address. Gray's Inn Buildings were halfway down a green court on my right; the number—26a—was the last set of offices in the block.

Scanning the board at the entrance, I discovered that Mr. Trusibond had his office in the second floor. Nothing so modern as a lift was visible, but the crooked passage showed me a staircase at the end, I went up it to the second floor, along another passage in which the wind whispered, unless the whisper came from the ghosts of dead-and-gone lawyers conferring there. On a door the words Trusibond, Solicitor, were inscribed, so I knocked.

In reply a sliding panel in the door was thrust up, and a girl with short-cut hair looked out at me with the complete and superior assurance of the London business girl. With manicured finger-nails suspended in mid-air above her typewriter, she curtly asked me my business there.

As she spoke I had a brief glimpse of an oldish man in horn spectacles perusing some legal document at a table placed against the further side of the room.

The next moment the door was opened, and the man with glasses beckoned me in. With a gesture, he invited me to follow him across the outer office. At the far end he knocked at an inner door, opened it, and again silently beckoned me in. Within the room we entered a tall, thin figure of a man sat at a table writing. My guide turned away and left me with him, closing the door behind him as he went.

"I have come—" I began, but the man at the table interrupted me at once.

"About the advertisement. Yes; I know."

■ knew this was beyond me, for the clerk with the spectacles had made no mention of the advertisement when he took me in, and, indeed, had uttered no word at all. Trusibond's was a reticent specimen of even the legal face. It was quite expressionless, with high cheekbones and fallen cheeks; yellow as a sheet of parchment, and almost as long. It reminded me (to use another metaphor) of a yellow coffin, and, like that receptacle, it did not give much away. The deep-set eyes which regarded me from beneath heavy brows had almost as little animation as if they were already cold and stiff. After a lengthy pause he spoke again,

"Have you brought your references and credentials?"

My heart sank at this request, then beat hopefully at the thought that the vacancy was as yet unfilled. Looking at my interrogator anxiously, I called up an ingratiating smile.

"I have no references as a chauffeur," I replied, "but I can drive any make of car, and look after it too."

Mr. Trusibond heard me dispassionately, as if the answer held no interest for him. He asked my name and former occupations and I told him.

"Where were you employed last?" he asked, playing with his pen.

I told him rather despondently that I had never been a chauffeur before.

He raised eyebrows at that. "What then?" he queried.

"I have followed many occupations of late years," I replied: "a clerk, last of all." Then I was struck with a happy thought. "But I was educated for law.",

I told him I had been through the war, and returned to England in the peace to find all hope of a legal career blotted out, because of circumstances which I briefly explained.

"This would be a poor job for a young man like you," he said, "It is no business of my own, and I know very little about it. I've been requested to find someone for a client of mine, who lives in Cornwall, hot a great way from Penzance. The duties are to look after a car, and to drive my client's nephew, who is an invalid, about the countryside."

"I shall be very glad to go, if you think I would suit your client," was my reply.

He gave me a hard look.