‘Is that door shut?’
‘Yes; do you feel a draught?’ said the manager. ‘Would you like a fire?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Soames. ‘The fact is, Mr Elderson, a young man in this office came to me yesterday with a very queer story. Mont and I think you should hear it.’
Accustomed to watching people’s eyes, Soames had the impression of a film (such as passes over the eyes of parrots) passing over the eyes of the manager. It was gone at once, if, indeed, it had ever been.
‘By all means.’
Steadily, with that power he had over his nerves when it came to a point, and almost word for word, Soames repeated a story which he had committed to heart in the watches of the night. He concluded with:
‘You’d like him in, no doubt. His name is Butterfield.’
During the recital Sir Lawrence had done nothing but scrutinize his finger nails; he now said:
‘You had to be told, Elderson.’
‘Naturally.’
The manager was crossing to the bell. The pink in his cheeks looked harder; his teeth showed, they had a pouted look.
‘Ask Mr Butterfield to come here.’
There followed a minute of elaborate inattention to each other. Then the young man came in, neat, commonplace, with his eyes on the manager’s face. Soames had a moment of compunction. This young fellow held his life in his hands, as it were – one of the great army who made their living out of self-suppression and respectability, with a hundred ready to step into his shoes at his first slip. What was that old tag of the provincial actor’s declamation – at which old Uncle Jolyon used to cackle so? ‘Like a pale martyr with his shirt on fire.’
‘So, Mr Butterfield, you have been good enough to exercise your imagination in my regard.’
‘No, sir.’
‘You stick to this fantastic story of eavesdropping?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We have no further use for your services then. Good morning!’
The young man’s eyes, dog-like, sought the face of Soames; a string twitched in his throat, his lips moved without a sound. He turned and went out.
‘So much for that,’ said the manager’s voice; ‘he’ll never get another job.’
The venom in those words affected Soames like the smell of Russian fat. At the same moment he had the feeling: This wants thinking out. Only if innocent, or guilty and utterly resolved, would Elderson have been so drastic. Which was he?
The manager went on:
‘I thank you for drawing my attention to the matter, gentlemen. I have had my eye on that young man for some time. A bad hat all round.’
Soames said glumly:
‘What do you make out he had to gain?’
‘Foresaw dismissal, and thought he would get in first.’
‘I see,’ said Soames. But he did not. His mind was back in his own office with Gradman rubbing his nose, shaking his grey head, and Butterfield’s: ‘No, sir, I’ve nothing against Mr Elderson, and he’s nothing against me.’
‘I shall require to know more about that young man,’ he thought.
The manager’s voice again cut through.
‘I’ve been thinking over what you said yesterday, Mr Forsyte, about an action lying against the Board for negligence. There’s nothing in that; our policy has been fully disclosed to the shareholders at two general meetings, and has passed without comment. The shareholders are just as responsible as the Board.’
‘H’m!’ said Soames, and took up his hat. ‘Are you coming, Mont?’
As if summoned from a long distance, Sir Lawrence galvanitically refixed his monocle.
‘It’s been very distasteful,’ he said; ‘you must forgive us, Elderson. You had to be told. I don’t think that young man can be quite all there – he had a peculiar look; but we can’t have this sort of thing, of course. Good-bye, Elderson.’
Placing their hats on their heads simultaneously the two walked out. They walked some way without speaking. Then Sir Lawrence said:
‘Butterfield? My brother-in-law has a head gardener called Butterfield – quite a good fellow. Ought we to look into that young man, Forsyte?’
‘Yes,’ said Soames, ‘leave him to me.’
‘I shall be very glad to. The fact is, when one has been at school with a man, one has a feeling, don’t you know.’
Soames gave vent to a sudden outburst.
‘You can’t trust anyone nowadays, it seems to me,’ he said. ‘It comes of – well, I don’t know what it comes of. But I’ve not done with this matter yet.’
Chapter Nine
SLEUTH
THE Hotch-potch Club went back to the eighteen-sixties. Founded by a posse of young sparks, social and political, as a convenient place in which to smoulder, while qualifying for the hearth of ‘Snooks’, The Remove, The Wayfarers, Burton’s, Ostrich Feather, and other more permanent resorts, the club had, chiefly owing to a remarkable chef in its early days, acquired a stability and distinction of its own. It still, however, retained a certain resemblance to its name, and this was its attraction to Michael – all sorts of people belonged. From Walter Nazing, and young semi-writers and patrons of the stage, who went to Venice, and talked of being amorous in gondolas, or of how so-and-so ought to be made love to; from such to bottle-brushed demi-generals, who had sat on courts-martial and shot men out of hand for the momentary weaknesses of human nature; from Wilfrid Desert (who never came there now) to Maurice Elderson, in the card-room, he could meet them all, and take the temperature of modernity. He was doing this in the Hotchpotch smoking-room, the late afternoon but one after Fleur had come into his bed, when he was informed: