CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Grand Manner
T
he
ingenuous mind of the pale young man in horn-rimmed spectacles expected solid gold and nothing else, with a small plutocrat, possibly, enthroned within. But the room into which he stepped was even more surprising.
It was small and stuffy, with green distempered walls, and worn brown linoleum on the floor. It appeared never to have been dusted. Old-fashioned spike files lay in piles in the corners. There was a small gas ring with a kettle on it in the fender and a Charles Dana Gibson girl pinned up over the mantelpiece.
The visitor’s chair, worn and inkstained, stood before a varnished desk so littered with papers, cigarette ends and odd bottles that there was no clear space upon it at all.
But Mr. Campion noticed these things only slowly. At firs
