The case of the Black Twenty-Two

The fact that it was an unusually sunny morning for an English summer day had not put Peter Daventry in the mood that it undoubtedly should have done. A riotous evening—during which he had dined not wisely but too well with a number of men who had been at Oxford with him—is not perhaps the best preparation for work on the following day, and Peter heartily cursed the relentless and inexorable fate that had made him junior partner of “Merryweather, Linnell and Daventry—Solicitors.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the window of his room, gazing disconsolately at the street below.

“Cornhill!” he muttered. “And it might be anywhere else for all it means to me, or for all I care. It’s a dull old world nowadays and devilish difficult to get thrills out of a business like this. After a night with the lads it gets me ‘on the raw’ more than ever.”

He looked down at London scurrying and hurrying. Men, women, young and old, treading their way quickly, decisively and imperturbably on the various errands and ventures that Life had chosen for them. “Poor devils!” he thought. “Day in and day out the same old grind! I sometimes wonder how they stand it. I certainly don’t know how I do.” He walked back to the chair by his desk, carefully selected a cigarette and pressed the bell.

A middle-aged, black-coated clerk appeared in the doorway.

“You rang, Mr. Daventry? You want me?”

“Oh, no, Plunkett! Not for a moment! What on earth gave you that extraordinary idea?”

“The bell——” He indicated the table with a sort of hopeless resignation.

“Merely a matter of ‘physical jerks’ on my part, Plunkett. I’ve been standing on my head on the desk, and in the process I inadvertently butted the bell and caused you——”

Plunkett smiled feebly. He was the kind of man that always did—thirty-five years’ service for the firm had made him afraid to do anything too vigorously—even to a smile. But he knew Peter Daventry and knew his little whims and ways—“he will have his little joke,” he would inform his friends and acquaintances, “and till he’s had it, it’s best to lie low and keep quiet.” It will be observed, therefore, that he had not encountered “Brer Rabbit.”

“You wanted——?”

“This morning’s post, Plunkett! Neither more nor less! Stay though—when you bring it in, you might also bring me all the papers and correspondence relating to the Langley Case.” He drew at his cigarette and watched the smoke rising. Then smiled. “Breach of promise is a God-send, Plunkett! Manna from the heights of Heaven.”

Plunkett stared at him it might be said, sorrowfully—and withdrew unobtrusively. At his second appearance he placed the unopened letters and the required papers on Peter’s desk.

“Thank you, Plunkett!”

“Thank you, Mr. Daventry. Mr. Linnell asked me to tell you he would like to see you in his room as soon as possible, sir. At your convenience that is to say, sir.”

Peter ran the paper-knife along the back of an envelope and nodded acquiescence. “All right, Plunkett. Tell Mr. Linnell I’ll blow along to him shortly.”

Mr. Merryweather, the founder of the firm, had been gathered to his fathers seven years before the date of the opening of this history; but his name had been retained. As Peter remarked to his more intimate friends, “the name of ‘Merryweather’ had a cheerful ring about it and therefore was worth keeping!”

David Linnell was a medium-sized, clean-shaven, spare man of fifty-eight years. He had been born in Lancashire and was a firm believer in the men of the Red Rose. He fully subscribed to the theory that “what Manchester thinks to-day—the rest of the world thinks to-morrow.” In conjunction with the departed Merryweather, he had built up an eminently satisfactory business in London, had attracted to it a sound and rapidly-growing “clientèle,” and when the question arose of Peter Daventry coming in as a partner, he had seen with all a Northerner’s shrewdness and acumen that this young Oxonian would bring to the firm new business and new clients from a hitherto unexplored source.