The Club of Queer Trades | Page 8

empty. But on a second and more careful
glance, we saw seated behind a very large desk with pigeonholes and
drawers of bewildering multiplicity, a small man with a black waxed
moustache, and the air of a very average clerk, writing hard. He looked
up as we came to a standstill.
"Did you knock?" he asked pleasantly. "I am sorry if I did not hear.
What can I do for you?"
There was a doubtful pause, and then, by general consent, the Major
himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward.
The letter was in his hand, and he looked unusually grim.
"Is your name P. G. Northover?" he asked.
"That is my name," replied the other, smiling.
"I think," said Major Brown, with an increase in the dark glow of his
face, "that this letter was written by you." And with a loud clap he
struck open the letter on the desk with his clenched fist. The man called

Northover looked at it with unaffected interest and merely nodded.
"Well, sir," said the Major, breathing hard, "what about that?"
"What about it, precisely," said the man with the moustache.
"I am Major Brown," said that gentleman sternly.
Northover bowed. "Pleased to meet you, sir. What have you to say to
me?"
"Say!" cried the Major, loosing a sudden tempest; "why, I want this
confounded thing settled. I want--"
"Certainly, sir," said Northover, jumping up with a slight elevation of
the eyebrows. "Will you take a chair for a moment." And he pressed an
electric bell just above him, which thrilled and tinkled in a room
beyond. The Major put his hand on the back of the chair offered him,
but stood chafing and beating the floor with his polished boot.
The next moment an inner glass door was opened, and a fair, weedy,
young man, in a frock-coat, entered from within.
"Mr Hopson," said Northover, "this is Major Brown. Will you please
finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?"
"Yes, sir," said Mr Hopson, and vanished like lightning.
"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said the egregious Northover, with
his radiant smile, "if I continue to work until Mr Hopson is ready. I
have some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my
holiday tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don't we? Ha!
ha!"
The criminal took up his pen with a childlike laugh, and a silence
ensued; a placid and busy silence on the part of Mr P. G. Northover; a
raging silence on the part of everybody else.
At length the scratching of Northover's pen in the stillness was mingled

with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the turning of the
handle, and Mr Hopson came in again with the same silent rapidity,
placed a paper before his principal, and disappeared again.
The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a few
moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him. He
took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered
something, muttering--"Careless." Then he read it again with the same
impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic Brown,
whose hand was beating the devil's tattoo on the back of the chair.
"I think you will find that all right, Major," he said briefly.
The Major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will appear
later, but he found it like this:
Major Brown to P. G. Northover. L s. d. January 1, to account rendered
5 6 0 May 9, to potting and embedding of zoo pansies 2 0 0 To cost of
trolley with flowers 0 15 0 To hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0 To hire
of house and garden for one day 1 0 0 To furnishing of room in
peacock curtains, copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0 To salary of Miss
Jameson 1 0 0 To salary of Mr Plover 1 0 0 ---------- Total L14 6 0 A
Remittance will oblige.
"What," said Brown, after a dead pause, and with eyes that seemed
slowly rising out of his head, "What in heaven's name is this?"
"What is it?" repeated Northover, cocking his eyebrow with amusement.
"It's your account, of course."
"My account!" The Major's ideas appeared to be in a vague stampede.
"My account! And what have I got to do with it?"
"Well," said Northover, laughing outright, "naturally I prefer you to
pay it."
The Major's hand was still resting on the back of the chair as the words
came. He scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chair bodily into

the air with one hand and hurled it at Northover's head.
The legs crashed against the desk,