Bones beamed.
"There I can help you," he said. "Of course it isn't necessary that
you should know anything about typewriting. But I can give you a few
hints," he said. "This thing, when you jiggle it up and down, makes
the thingummy-bob run along. Every time you hit one of these
letters---- I'll show you.... Now, suppose I am writing 'Dear Sir,' I
start with a 'D.' Now, where's that jolly old 'D'?" He scowled at the
keyboard, shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders. "I thought so,"
he said; "there ain't a 'D.' I had an idea that that wicked old----"
"Here's the 'D,'" she pointed out.
Bones spent a strenuous but wholly delightful morning and afternoon.
He was half-way home to his chambers in Curzon Street before he
realized that he had not fixed the rather important question of salary.
He looked forward to another pleasant morning making good that lapse.
It was his habit to remain late at his office at least three nights a
week, for Bones was absorbed in his new career.
"Schemes Ltd." was no meaningless title. Bones had schemes which
embraced every field of industrial, philanthropic, and social activity.
He had schemes for building houses, and schemes for planting rose trees
along all the railway tracks. He had schemes for building motor-cars,
for founding labour colonies, for harnessing the rise and fall of the
tides, he had a scheme for building a theatre where the audience sat on
a huge turn-table, and, at the close of one act, could be twisted
round, with no inconvenience to themselves, to face a stage which has
been set behind them. Piqued by a certain strike which had caused him
a great deal of inconvenience, he was engaged one night working out a
scheme for the provision of municipal taxicabs, and he was so absorbed
in his wholly erroneous calculations that for some time he did not hear
the angry voices raised outside the door of his private office.
Perhaps it was that that portion of his mind which had been left free
to receive impressions was wholly occupied with a scheme--which
appeared in no books or records--for raising the wages of his new
secretary.
But presently the noise penetrated even to him, and he looked up with a
touch of annoyance.
"At this hour of the night! ... Goodness gracious ... respectable
building!"
His disjointed comments were interrupted by the sound of a scuffle, an
oath, a crash against his door and a groan, and Bones sprang to the
door and threw it open.
As he did so a man who was leaning against it fell in.
"Shut the door, quick!" he gasped, and Bones obeyed.
The visitor who had so rudely irrupted himself was a man of middle age,
wearing a coarse pea-jacket and blue jersey of a seaman, his peaked hat
covered with dust, as Bones perceived later, when the sound of
scurrying footsteps had died away.