"A secretary? The very thing! Let me think."
He supported his chin upon one hand, his elbow upon another.
"You will want paper, pens, and ink--we have all those," he said.
"There is a large supply in that cupboard. Also india-rubber. I am not sure if we have any india-rubber, but that can be procured. And a ruler," he said, "for drawing straight lines and all that sort of thing."
"And a typewriter?" she suggested.
Bones smacked his forehead with unnecessary violence.
"A typewriter! I knew this office wanted something. I said to Ali yesterday: "You silly old a.s.s----""
"Oh, you have a girl?" she said disappointedly.
"Ali," said Bones, "is the name of a native man person who is devoted to me, body and soul. He has been, so to speak, in the family for years," he explained.
"Oh, it"s a man," she said.
Bones nodded.
"Ali. Spelt A-l-y; it"s Arabic."
"A native?"
Bones nodded.
"Of course he will not be in your way," ha hastened to explain. "He is in Bournemouth just now. He had sniffles." he explained rapidly, "and then he used to go to sleep, and snore. I hate people who snore, don"t you?"
She laughed again. This was the most amazing of all possible employers.
"Of course," Bones went on, "I snore a bit myself. All thinkers do--I mean all brainy people. Not being a jolly old snorer yourself----"
"Thank you," said the girl.
Other tenants or the satellites of other tenants who occupied the palatial buildings wherein the office of Bones was situated saw, some few minutes later, a bare-headed young man dashing down the stairs three at a time; met him, half an hour later, staggering up those same stairs handicapped by a fifty-pound typewriter in one hand, and a chair in the style of the late Louis Quinze in the other, and wondered at the urgency of his movements.
"I want to tell you," said the girl, "that I know very little about shorthand."
"Shorthand is quite unnecessary, my dear--my jolly old stenographer,"
said Bones firmly. "I object to shorthand on principle, and I shall always object to it. If people," he went on, "were intended to write shorthand, they would have been born without the alphabet. Another thing----"
"One moment, Mr. Tibbetts," she said. "I don"t know a great deal about typewriting, either."
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 t.i.tle. 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 munic.i.p.al 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 coa.r.s.e 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.
The man was gripping his left arm as if in pain, and a thin trickle of red was running down the back of his big hand.
"Sit down, my jolly old mariner," said Bones anxiously. "What"s the matter with you? What"s the trouble, dear old sea-dog?"
The man looked up at him with a grimace.
"They nearly got it, the swine!" he growled.
He rolled up his sleeve and, deftly tying a handkerchief around a red patch, chuckled:
"It is only a scratch," he said. "They"ve been after me for two days, Harry Weatherall and Jim Curtis. But right"s right all the world over.
I"ve suffered enough to get what I"ve got--starved on the high seas, and starved on Lomo Island. Is it likely that I"m going to let them share?"
Bones shook his head.
"You sit down, my dear old fellow," he said sympathetically.
The man thrust his hands laboriously into his inside pocket and pulled out a flat oilskin case. From this he extracted a folded and faded chart.
"I was coming up to see a gentleman in these buildings," he said, "a gentleman named Tibbetts."
Bones opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself.
"Me and Jim Curtis and young Harry, we were together in the _Serpent Queen_--my name"s Dibbs. That"s where we got hold of the yarn about Lomo Island, though we didn"t believe there was anything in it. But when this Dago died----"
"Which Dago?" asked Bones.