out of place in a city. Past these and past the next small door bearing the sign:
RYNOX
ENQUIRIES HERE
and so to the modest mahogany door—the door which most people passing along this corridor thought was that of a lavatory. The handle of this door turned in F. X.’s fingers. He went in, shutting the door behind him.
‘’Morning, Miss Pagan. ’Morning, Harris.’ Thus F. X., hanging up his light grey, somehow dashing-looking hat.
‘Good-morning, Mr Benedik,’ said Miss Pagan, her sad, blond beauty illumined by one of her rare smiles.
‘’Morning, sir,’ said Harris.
‘Mr Rickforth in, Miss Pagan?’
‘Yes, Mr Benedik. I think he’s in your room. He said he wanted to see you particularly before you started work.’
‘Mr Anthony here?’
‘Not yet, Mr Benedik. Mr Anthony wired from Liverpool that he was coming in on the twelve-fifty; would you wait lunch for him?’
F. X. crossed the room, stood with his fingers upon the baize door which separated this outer office of his from the corridor leading to the partners’ rooms.
‘Anything else, Miss Pagan?’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to come in with the letters just yet. Wait until I’ve seen Mr Rickforth.’
‘Very well, Mr Benedik.’ Another of Miss Pagan’s rare and sadly beautiful smiles. ‘No, nothing else except Mr Marsh.’
A frown marred the pleasantness of the senior partner’s tanned face. ‘Marsh,’ he said. His voice grated on the ear. ‘Has he been bothering you?’
Miss Pagan shrugged elegant shoulders. ‘Well, not bothering, Mr Benedik, but he’s rung up twice this morning; the second time only five minutes before you got here. He seems to want you very urgently.’
‘Ever know him,’ growled F. X., ‘when he didn’t want to see me very urgently?’
Miss Pagan shook her blond head. ‘I’ve never seen Mr Marsh, Mr Benedik. I must say, though, on the telephone he always does sound cross.’
‘Crosser than his letters?’ said F. X.
‘That,’ said Miss Pagan, ‘would be impossible … Anyhow, he said would you please telephone him as soon as you got here.’
F. X. raised his eyebrows. ‘Number?’ he said.
‘I asked him for the number, Mr Benedik, and he wouldn’t give it.’ Miss Pagan’s eyebrows suggested that Mr Benedik should know by this time what Mr Marsh was like. ‘All he’d say was “the Kensington number”.’
F. X. laughed, a snorting contemptuous laugh. ‘That’s like the fool!’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll get on to him. I’ll see Mr Rickforth now. I’ll ring when I want you, Miss Pagan.’
2
‘But good gracious me!’ said Rickforth. ‘My dear Benedik, I daresay that I have not your push, your ability to handle big things courageously, but I do know, and I think that you know too, that I’m a man with a certain amount of business knowledge, and what I say, Benedik—’
F. X., whose gravity throughout this interview had amounted to more than sadness, suddenly grinned. The whole man, with that flash of white teeth, shed twenty hard-fought years. He said:
‘Sam, my boy, when you clasp your hands over that pot-belly of yours and start calling me Benedik, I can’t help it, but I want to kick your bottom. You know, Sam, the trouble with you is that you’ve got the ability of a Hatry, the tastes of a sexless Nero, and the conscience of an Anabaptist minister. You’re a mess, Sam, an awful mess, but you’re not a bad fellow as long as you don’t hold your belly and call me Benedik, and’—momentarily the smile faded—‘and as long as you don’t try to teach F. X. Benedik his job. Good Lord, man, don’t you think that I know what state the business is in? You seem to forget, as a matter of fact, that I made the damn business. I know how deep we are in it, but I know, too, how high we’re going to soar out of it after this waiting business is over, so for God’s sake stop moaning. If you want to get out, get out! Go for a holiday or something. Go and hold your belly in a cinema. Don’t come here and try to make that fat face of yours all long. I can’t stand it and I won’t!’
Samuel Harvey Rickforth laughed; but it was a laugh that had in it an undercurrent of fear.
‘My dear F. X.,’ he said, ‘I’m not being what I suppose you’d call “a wet sock.” I’m merely trying to show you the sensible point of view. RYNOX gave up practically all their other interests for the Paramata Synthetic Rubber Company. You did it. You backed your own judgment and we, very naturally, followed you. But even at the time—at the beginning, I mean—I freely confess I got nervous. I thought to myself, can he pull it off? … What’s the matter? …’
F. X. had sunk into an armchair of deep and yielding leather. His long legs were thrust stiffly out before him. A large white silk handkerchief covered his face. His hands were folded over his chest in the manner of a sleeping Crusader. From under the handkerchief his voice came hollow:
‘Nothing’s the matter. Go on, Samuel, go on!’
Again Rickforth laughed. ‘It’s all very well,’ he said, ‘but I will finish. It’s my opinion, F. X., and I’m not joking, that you’ve done what you’d call “bitten off more than you can chew.” Look at us, overdrawn here, overdrawn there; creditors beginning to get uneasy, and what are we waiting for? Orders that may come but equally may not, and … and …’ His fat, well-to-do voice grew suddenly sharp. ‘And, F. X., RYNOX is unlimited! You would have it, and it is, and whereas I might not say all this if we were a limited company, as a partner in an unlimited company I must say all this.’
The handkerchief flew a foot into the air as F. X. let out his pent breath. Suddenly he hoisted his bulky length from the chair, took two steps, and clapped a lean brown hand—which to Samuel Harvey Rickforth felt like the end of a steel crane—upon Samuel Harvey Rickforth’s shoulder.
‘My dear Sam!’ said F. X., ‘if you don’t know me by this time well enough to know that I wouldn’t let a blue-nose go into your house and sell your glass while you’re drinking out of it, you’re an old fathead! Now, for God’s sake, go out, buy yourself a couple of bottles of Pol Roget ’19 and charge ’em down to the travellers’ expenses. And when you come back, for God’s sake come back cheerful. I’ve got enough troubles without seeing those podgy hands of yours clasping that obscenity you call a stomach. What you wear those buff waistcoats for, I can’t make out! They only accentuate it. What you want, Sam, is a bit more of your daughter’s spirit. If I were to tell Peter what you’ve been saying this morning—’
‘I say, F. X., you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ Mr Rickforth was alarmed.
F. X. put back his head and laughed. ‘By God, Sam! I believe I’ve got you!’ he said. ‘I haven’t tried it before, but I’ll try it now. If I have any more of this S.O.S. stuff, I’ll tell Tony and then you’ll get it hot all round. Now, buzz off, you old blight!’
Rickforth went, but the door was only just closed behind him when it opened again. It admitted his round pink-and-white face, somehow frightened-looking under the ivory white sheen of his baldness.
‘I say, F. X.’ said the face, ‘you won’t really tell Peter, will you? I mean, damn it, business is business …’
The 193—edition of the Directory of Directors smote the door with all its half-hundredweight of matter one-tenth of a second after Samuel Harvey Rickforth had closed it.
F. X. reached out for the telephone; picked it up; lay back in the chair with the receiver at his ear and the body of the instrument cuddled closely against his chest. He always spoke. like many men who have lived at least half their lives, in very different places from city offices, very loudly