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Updated: May 13, 2025
"What a shame!" Hilda's scorn shrivelled up Mr. Karkeek. There was nothing that she detested so much as a disloyalty. "Yes. I couldn't stop him, of course. No formal agreement between us. Couldn't be, in a case like ours! So he had me. He'd taken my wages quick enough as long as it suited him. Then he comes into money, and behaves like that. Jealousy! They were all jealous, always had been.
But whereas Karkeek was privately ashamed, Dayson was proud of his rôle, which gave him the illusion of power and glory. "Just take this down, will you?" said Mr. Cannon. Hilda grasped at her notebook and seized a pencil, and then held herself tense to receive the message, staring downwards at the blank page. Dayson lolled in his chair, throwing his head back.
Karkeek, and not the name of the commanding Mr. Cannon, should be upon the door-plates and the wire-blinds of the establishment. But of course she was not in a position to estimate the full significance of this remarkable phenomenon. Further, though she perfectly remembered her mother's observations upon Mr.
"You're all alone, too," she said, following him into his room. "Sowter's out," he answered laconically, waiting for her to precede him. He said nothing as to the office-boy, nor as to Mr. Karkeek. Hilda was now sure that something strange had happened. "So you've heard from Sarah, have you?" he began, when they were both seated in his own room.
There was no reason why Hilda should remain, burning gas to no purpose. She had telegraphed, by favour of a Karkeek office-boy, to Miss Gailey, saying that she would come by the first train on the morrow Saturday, and she had therefore much to do at home. Nevertheless, she sat idle in the office, unable to leave.
Dayson took a pen, and after describing a few flourishes in the air, about a quarter of an inch above the level of the paper, he magnificently signed: "Dayson & Co." Such was the title of the proprietorship. Just as Karkeek was Mr. Cannon's dummy in the law, so was Dayson in the newspaper business.
And immediately, from the hidden corridor at the top, she heard the voice of Mr. Cannon, imperious: "Karkeek!" The shabby-genteel man stopped. Hilda wanted to escape, but she could not, chiefly because her pride would not allow. She had to go on. She went on, frowning. The man vanished back into the corridor. She could hear that Mr. Cannon had joined him in conversation.
The queerness of the name had attracted Hilda's attention several years earlier, when the signs were fresh. It was an accident that she had noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive.
She arrived at the corridor. "How-d'ye-do, Miss Lessways?" Mr. Cannon greeted her with calm politeness, turning from Mr. Karkeek, who raised his hat. "Will you come this way? One moment, Mr. Karkeek." Through a door marked "Private" Mr. Cannon introduced Hilda straight into his own room; then shut the door on her.
A few doors away was a somewhat new building, of three storeys the highest in the Square. The ground floor was an ironmongery; it comprised also a side entrance, of which the door was always open. This side entrance showed a brass-plate, "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor." And the wire-blinds of the two windows of the first floor also bore the words: "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor. Q. Karkeek, Solicitor."
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