Reginald Cruden Part 28

Ah! this was the last of all the points, and his thoughts after that ran on the same lines till the train plunged into the smoke and gloom of the great city which was henceforth to extend to him its tender mercies.

If Reginald had reckoned on a deputation of directors of the Select Agency Corporation to meet their new secretary at the station, he was destined to be disappointed. There were plenty of people there, but none concerning themselves with him as he dragged his carpet-bag from under the seat and set foot on the platform.

The bag was very heavy, and Shy Street, so he was told, was ten-minutes'

walk from the station. It did occur to him that most secretaries of companies would take a cab under such circ.u.mstances and charge it to "general expenses." But he did not care to spend either the Corporation's money or his own for so luxurious a purpose, and therefore gripped his bag manfully and wrestled with it out into the street.

The ten-minutes grew to considerably more than twenty before they both found themselves in Shy Street. A long, old-fas.h.i.+oned, dismal street it was, with some shops in the middle, and small offices at either end. No imposing-looking edifice, chaste in architecture and luxurious in proportions, stood with open doors to receive its future lord. Reginald and his bag stumbled up a side staircase to the first floor over a chemist's shop, where a door with the name "Medlock" loomed before him, and told him he had come to his journey's end.

Waiting a moment to wipe the perspiration from his face, he turned the handle and found himself in a large, bare, carpetless room, with a table and a few chairs in the middle of it, a clock over the chimneypiece, a few directories piled up in one corner, and a bundle of circulars and wrappers in another; and a little back room screened off from the general observation with the word "private" on the door. Such was the impression formed in Reginald's mind by a single glance round his new quarters.

In the flutter of his first entrance, however, he entirely overlooked one important piece of furniture--namely, a small boy with long lank hair and pale blotched face, who was sitting on a low stool near the window, greedily devouring the contents of a pink-covered periodical.

This young gentleman, on becoming aware of the presence of a stranger, crumpled his paper hurriedly into his pocket and rose to his feet.

"What do yer want?" he demanded.

"Is Mr Medlock here?" asked Reginald.

"No fear," replied the boy.

"Has he left any message?"

"Don't know who you are. What's yer name?"

"I'm Mr Cruden, the new secretary."

"Oh, you're 'im, are yer? Yes, you've got to address them there envellups, and 'e'll be up in the morning."

This was depressing. Reginald's castles in the air were beginning to tumble about his ears in rapid succession. The bare room he could excuse, on the ground that the Corporation was only just beginning its operations. Doubtless the carpet was on order, and was to be delivered soon. He could even afford not to afflict himself much about this vulgar, irreverent little boy, who was probably put in, as they put in a little watch-dog, to see to the place until he and his staff of a.s.sistants rendered his further presence unnecessary. But it did chill him to find that after his long journey, and his farewell to his own home, no one should think it worth while to be here to meet him and install him with common friendliness into his new quarters. However, Mr Medlock was a man of business, and was possibly prevented by circ.u.mstances over which he had no control from being present to receive him.

"Where's the housekeeper?" demanded he, putting down his bag and relieving himself of his overcoat.

"'Ousekeeper! Oh yus," said the boy, with a sn.i.g.g.e.r; "no 'ousekeepers 'ere."

"Where are my rooms, then?" asked Reginald, beginning to think it a pity the Corporation had brought him down all that way before they were ready for him.

"Ain't this room big enough for yer?" said the boy; "ain't no more 'sep'

your bedroom--no droring-rooms in this shop."

"Show me the bedroom," said Reginald.

The boy shuffled to the door and up another flight of stairs, at the head of which he opened the door of a very small room, about the size of one of the Wilderham studies, with just room to squeeze round a low iron bedstead without sc.r.a.ping the wall.

"There you are--clean and haired and no error. I've slep' in it myself."

Reginald motioned him from the room, and then sitting down on the bed, looked round him.

He could not understand it. Any common butcher's boy would be better put up. A little box of a bedroom like this, with no better testimonial to its cleanliness and airiness than could be derived from the fact that the dirty little watch-dog downstairs had occupied it! And in place of a parlour that bare gaunt room below in which to sit of an evening and take his meals and enjoy himself. Why ever had the Corporation not had the ordinary decency to have his permanent accommodation ready for him before he arrived?

He washed himself as well as he could without soap and towel, and returned to the first floor, where he found the boy back on his old stool, and once more absorbed in his paper.

The reader looked up as Reginald entered.

"Say, what's yer name," said he, "ever read _Tim Tigerskin_?"

"No, I've not," replied Reginald, staring at his questioner, and wondering whether he was as erratic in his intellect as he was mealy in his countenance.

"'Tain't a bad 'un, but 'tain't 'arf as prime as _The Pirate's Bride_.

The bloke there pisons two on 'em with prussic acid, and wouldn't ever 'ave got nabbed if he 'adn't took some hisself by mistake, the flat!"

Reginald could hardly help smiling at this appetising _resume_.

"I want something to eat," he said. "Is there any place near here where I can get it?"

"Trum's, but 'is sosseges is off at three o'clock. Better try Cupper's--he's a good 'un for bloaters; _I_ deals with 'im."

Reginald felt neither the spirit nor the inclination to make a personal examination into the merits of the rival caterers.

"You'd better go and get me something," he said to the boy; "coffee and fish or cold meat will do."

"No fear; I ain't a-goin' for nothing," replied the boy. "I'll do your errands for a tanner a week and your leavings, but not no less."

"You shall have it," said Reginald. Whereupon the boy undertook the commission and departed.

The meal was a dismal one. The herrings were badly over-smoked and the coffee was like mud, and the boy's conversation, which filled in a running accompaniment, was not conducive to digestion.

"I'd 'most a mind to try some prussic in that corfee," said that bloodthirsty young gentleman, "if I'd a known where the chemist downstairs keeps his'n. Then they'd 'a said you'd poisoned yourself 'cos you was blue coming to this 'ere 'ole. I'd 'a been put in the box at the inquige, and I'd 'a said Yes, you was blue, and I thought there was a screw loose the minit I see yer, and I'd seen yer empty a paper of powder in your corfee while you thort n.o.body wasn't a-looking. And the jury'd say it was tempory 'sanity and sooiside, and say they considers I was a honest young feller, and vote me a bob out of the poor-box. There you are. What do you think of that?"

"I suppose that's what the man in _The Pirate's Bride_ ought to have done," said Reginald, with a faint smile.

"To be sure he ought. Why, it's enough to disgust any one with the flat, when he goes and takes the prussic hisself. Of course he'd get found out."

"Well, it's just as well you've not put any in my coffee," said Reginald. "It's none too nice as it is. And I'd advise you, young fellow, to burn all those precious story-books of yours, if that's the sort of stuff they put into your head."

The boy stared at him in horrified amazement.

"Burn 'em! Oh, Walker!"

"What's your name?" demanded Reginald.

"Why, Love," replied the boy, in a tone as if to say you had only to look at him to know his name.

"Well then, young Love, clear these things away and come and make a start with these envelopes."

"No fear. I ain't got to do no envellups. You're got to do 'em."

"I say you've got to do them too," said Reginald, sternly; "and if you don't choose to do what you're told I can't keep you here."

The boy looked up in astonishment.