Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 66

At that the young man suddenly faced him, as if he meant to say something of importance, and stopped.

"Yes, I suppose I can afford it," he returned, and added with apparent irrelevance, "Do you happen to know Stormly village, Mr. Saunderson?"

"I've driven through it."

Christopher nodded. "So have I. I'll not detain you any longer. Will you let Clisson know I shall be there on Thursday?"

"Certainly. Will you like me to accompany you?"

Christopher shook his head. "Not this time, I think. I would rather be alone."

"And one thing," Mr. Saunderson coughed a little nervously, "the name?

We can arrange the legal identification this afternoon, but what name will you ultimately take?"

Christopher came to a standstill at the door. Here was a decision thrust on him for which he was oddly unprepared. He recognised at once it meant setting the seal to his own committal if he answered as the lawyer evidently expected and hoped he would do. He paused just long enough to remember how hardly he had taken Mr. Aston's insistence he should sign his marriage register as Aston Masters.

"I must take the name since I take its belongings," he said ruefully, and Mr. Saunderson felt his victory was complete.

On the following Thursday morning there was nothing in the aspect of earth or sky to indicate to the workers in Princes Buildings the importance of that day to their respective fortunes. On the top floor only a sense of gentle expectancy was present, and a complacent faith in their own readiness to receive and set at ease the young man who was to be the outward visible sign of all that for which they toiled so unceasingly.

As an individual, the younger men bestowed a certain curiosity not unmixed with envy on him; as the successor of Peter Masters, they entertained no doubt whatever he would obediently adhere to the prescribed system as they themselves did. Christopher had arrived in Birmingham the night before and put up at an hotel. Early the next morning he went up the steps into the central corridor of the great buildings that were to all intents and purposes his. There was no one about but a lift boy who did not recognise him, but seeing him look round with deliberate curiosity, asked him civilly what floor he wanted.

"Mr. Masters' private offices," Christopher explained. "Top floor, aren't they?"

The boy nodded. Christopher studied him gravely as they went up in the lift as one of the smallest and probably least important items into whose service he had entered.

The porter at the door of the offices asked Christopher his name, and he hesitated a moment.

"You need not announce me," he said quietly, at last. "I am Mr.

Masters."

The man gave a guttural gasp of amazement. A rumour of the possible arrival of the young millionaire had percolated despite Mr. Clisson's care, through the range of desks to the doorkeeper, who without discernible reasons had expected some time in the day a procession of black coats and grave men to appear from the doors of the lift and with formal solemnity to proceed to the closely locked door of that remote silent office. He opened the door for this calm, quiet young man in flurried trepidation, half expecting that Mr. Clisson would dismiss him on the spot for transgressing such a fundamental rule as admitting a stranger without announcing his name, but as totally unable to disobey the stranger as if it were Peter Masters himself.

Christopher walked quickly down the line of clerks, who looked up one after the other, and did not look back at their work again. At last a senior man advanced and accosted him.

"Do you want Mr. Clisson, sir?" he asked, in a tone verging between deference and curiosity.

Christopher said he did, and added abruptly, "I remember you, you are Mr. Hunter. I saw you four years ago when I came here with my father."

He caught his breath when he had said it. It was purely involuntary.

Some unaccountable a.s.sociation of ideas was bridging the distance between him and the dead man minute by minute. But Mr. Hunter transferred his allegiance from the dead to the living in that moment of recognition, and led him away to Mr. Clisson's. .h.i.therto all-important presence with mechanical alacrity rather than personal desire to relinquish the honours of escort.

Mr. Clisson was a keen, sharp-featured man of narrow outlook, the best of servants, the worst of masters. A genius for detail and a miraculous memory had carried him from the position of junior clerk to his present prominence when the death of the Princ.i.p.al left him with his minute knowledge of routine and detail practically master of the situation as far as Mr. Saunderson was concerned. But his inability to bend with the need of the day, or to cope with wider issues than those concerned with office work had had far-reaching results, not even wholly unconnected with the tragedy in the mill yard at the Patrimondi works.

He apologised to Christopher for the lack of a better reception, as if he, and not Christopher, were responsible for the informality of it.

"We imagined from Mr. Saunderson's letter you would arrive by the 12.30 from town. I had ventured to order lunch for you here on that understanding," the head clerk explained deferentially. "What will you like to do first, sir?"

"I wish to go into the inner office and for you to carry on the usual routine precisely as in my father's time."

There was no hesitation over the term now.

"Bring me such letters and reports as you would bring him. I must find out for myself how much or how little of it I am capable of understanding."

"It will be a question of practice rather than of understanding with you, sir, I am confident," returned Mr. Clisson politely, turning over in his mind what business it would be least embarra.s.sing to submit to this decided young man.

"It will be your business to see I get the practice," Christopher answered.

Together they unlocked the door of Peter Masters' sanctum and the head clerk flung it open.

"It is precisely as he left it that day. Nothing has been done excepting the sorting of the papers, which Mr. Saunderson and myself did between us. The last time Mr. Saunderson was here we had it cleaned out. You will find the bells and telephones all labelled. If you will wait a few minutes I will send a man in with ink and writing material, and the keys, and I will bring you this morning's letters myself."

Christopher thanked him mechanically and entered the room. He stood in the window silently waiting, while a young clerk trembling with excitement performed the small services necessary, and asked nervously if he could do more.

"Nothing else now. What is your name?"

He gave it with faltering tongue. In the old days such an inquiry was a distinction hardly earned.

Christopher was alone at last. He walked slowly across the room and sat down in his father's chair and touched the big bunch of keys laid there on the table before him.

An overwhelming desire for some direct message from the dead man, some defined recognition of his right to be there at all, pressed on him.

He opened the drawers and pigeon-holes of the great table with a faint hope he might light on some overlooked note, or uncomplete memorandum addressed to him. Mr. Saunderson had a.s.sured him no such thing existed beyond the curt exact clue he had put in his hand four years ago when the old will had been destroyed.

He glanced at the neat doc.u.ments, the piles of labelled papers; there was nothing personal here, nothing that conveyed any sense to him but that of a vast machine of which he had become a part.

In the pen tray lay a collection of pen-holders and pencils, a knife he had seen his father use, and a smaller knife. He picked this up and looked at it.

It was rather a unique little knife, with a green jade handle, and the initials A. A. were plainly engraved on the label. He had recognised it at once and he stared at it as it lay in his hand, trying to comprehend what its presence there might mean. He had lent it one day to Peter Masters, who had asked him where he had got it. And he had answered it had belonged to Aymer Aston, but he had found it as a boy and Aymer had given it to him. Peter had given it back without the further explanation that he had originally given it to Aymer. A day or so later Christopher had missed it, and he told his host regretfully it was lost. Again Peter failed to explain he was the finder. Yet here was the knife on the desk where he had sat day after day.

Perhaps it had not seemed worth returning. Yet Christopher was curiously loath to accept that simple answer. It seemed to him as he fingered the smooth green sides, as if other fingers had done this in this precise spot before, a strange aching familiarity attached itself to the simple action. For someone's sake Peter Masters _had_ so touched and handled this cool green thing, he was sure of it, and suddenly he was conscious here was the message he sought. Here in the mere sensation of touch lay the thread of recognition that linked him with the dead man, so slight and intangible that it would bear no expression in heavy words.

There was a knock at the door. Christopher laid the little green knife back in its place before he answered it. Mr. Clisson entered with a handful of letters.

"This is a very good sample, sir. As many as you will get through at first, I expect," he said apologetically.

He sat down opposite Christopher and handed him letter after letter, giving such explanations as were necessary. Christopher made few comments. He put the letters into two separate piles. Presently there was one concerning the sale of some land in the neighbourhood of the Stormly Foundry.

"It is only just started, sir. I think we shall get a good price if we hold out."

"I am not going to sell any land at all. You will write and say I have altered my mind."

He spoke with the keen decision of his father. Mr. Clisson gazed at him with pained amazement.

"It is only the leasehold we sell, sir, not the actual land."

"I do not sell land," repeated Christopher sharply.

"Of course, it shall be as you wish, sir."