558 ANGEL PAVEMENT

ham, as he took down his hat and coat. "Get it all
worked out while I'm up at Brown and Gorstein's,
God!—we're in a mess. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Left to himself, Mr. Smeeth did not think. He refused
to think. He applied himself sternly to the task before
him, and for the next quarter of an hour never looked
up from his books and his calculations. He was not
Herbert Norman Smeeth, but simply the master of the
neat little figures, and he added and subtracted and
multiplied them without letting his mind wander away
from their austere but calculable world, in which he had
spent so many pleasant hours. He had plenty to do. All
the orders of the last few weeks, back to the early part of
December, in fact, had to be estimated on the basis of
these new prices, and he had to add the usual costs and
then the commission already paid to Golspie. He did it
with his usual neatness, accuracy, thoroughness, produc-
ing a statement that could be understood at a glance. At
the end of quarter of an hour,, the telephone rang and
disturbed him, but it was not a call for them. Mechanic-
ally, then, he filled his pipe, and spent a minute or two
listening idly to the various sounds that came from the
steps outside, from Angel Pavement, from the City be-
yond, a sort of vague symphony, and the only one, it
seemed, that he would hear that night. He put his pipe
in his mouth unlit, and bent over his figures again. Time
slipped away as the totals mounted up on the statement,
and soon half an hour had gone. He turned now to other
books, to the general financial side of the matter, estimat-
ing what they had in hand and what was due to them.

Mr. Dersingham came bursting in, large and active,
hut a figure of misery, 'It's no use, Smeeth. We're
absolutely done."