In all the city of London there was perhaps no office more elegant than that in which Mr Arthur Gine spent his leisurely business hours. It was a large room, panelled in white wood, with pink-shaded wall brackets of frosted silver. Its floor was covered with a deep rose carpet into which the feet sank as into an old lawn; and such furnishing as the room held was of the most costly description. Visitors and clients who had business with this dainty lawyer were warned not to smoke in his sacred presence. The windows were doubled to keep out the noises of Holborn; there were exterior sun-blinds to exclude the fugitive rays of pale sunlight which occasionally bathed the City; and long velvet curtains, in harmony with the carpet, to shut out the horrid world that roared and palpitated outside Mr Gine’s exquisite chamber. In this room was a faint aroma of roses – he was partial to the more expensive varieties of perfume, and had a standing order with the best of the Grasse houses.

He was a fair man with an unblemished skin and a small yellow moustache; a credit to his hosier and shirt-maker. His wasp-waisted morning coat fitted him without the suspicion of a wrinkle; his grey waistcoat, the severe dark trousers with the thinnest of white stripes, the patent shoes, the exact cravat, were all parts of a sartorial symmetry.

Mr Gine seldom appeared in the courts. His head clerk, a grey hard man of fifty, who was generally supposed by Mr Gine’s brother solicitors to be the brains of the business, prepared most of the briefs, interviewed the majority of clients, leaving to his employer the most important.

On a bright morning in the early days of September, Mr Gine’s big Rolls glided noiselessly to the kerb, the youthful footman seated by the side of the driver sprang out and opened the door, and Arthur Gine stepped daintily forth. There was a small white rose in his buttonhole, and the passer-by who saw him, noting the perfect shine of his silk hat, the glitter of his patent shoes, and the ebony stick that he carried in his gloved hand, thought he was a bridegroom stopping on his way to church.

He entered the tiny electric lift and was whisked up to the first floor. A porter opened his door with a little bow and Arthur walked in, followed by the servitor, who took his hat, gloves and cane, and disappeared with them to an inner room. Mr Gine sat down at his desk, glanced at the letters that had been left opened for his inspection, and pushed them aside. He pressed an onyx bell-push twice, and in a few seconds his hard-faced managing clerk came in, carrying a wad of papers in his hand.

“Close the door, Gilder. What are these?”

Gilder threw the papers on the polished table.

“Mostly writs,” he said curtly.

“For me?”