he profession by
the compendious abbreviation of Slossons. Edward Henry, having been a
lawyer's clerk some twenty-five years earlier, was aware of Slossons.
Although on the strength of his youthful clerkship he claimed, and was
admitted, to possess a very special knowledge of the law--enough to
silence argument when his opponent did not happen to be an actual
solicitor--he did not in truth possess a very special knowledge of
the law--how should he, seeing that he had only been a practitioner
of shorthand?--but the fame of Slossons he positively was acquainted
with! He had even written letters to the mighty Slossons.

Every lawyer and lawyer's clerk in the realm knew the greatness
of Slossons, and crouched before it, and also, for the most part,
impugned its righteousness with sneers. For Slossons acted for the
ruling classes of England, who only get value for their money when
they are buying something that they can see, smell, handle, or
intimidate--such as a horse, a motor-car, a dog, or a lackey.
Slossons, those crack solicitors, like the crack nerve specialists in
Harley Street and the crack fortune-tellers in Bond Street, sold their
invisible, inodorous and intangible wares of advice at double, treble,
or decuple their worth, according to the psychology of the
customer. They were great bullies. And they were, further, great
money-lenders--on behalf of their wealthier clients. In obedience to a
convenient theory that it is imprudent to leave money too long in one
place, they were continually calling in mortgages, and re-lending the
sums so collected on fresh investments, thus achieving two bills of
costs on each transaction, and sometimes three, besides employing an
army of valuers, surveyors and mortgage-insurance brokers. In short,
Slossons had nothing to learn about the art of self-enrichment.

Three vast motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and
Edward Henry's hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle.

He began by demanding the senior partner, who was denied to him by
an old clerk with a face like a stone wall. Only his brutal Midland
insistence, and the mention of the important letter which he had
written to the firm in the middle of the night, saved him from the
ignominy of seeing no partner at all. At the end of the descending
ladder of partners he clung desperately to Mr. Vulto, and he saw Mr.
Vulto--a youngish and sarcastic person with blue eyes, lodged in a
dark room at the back of t