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Page 9
The City received Mike with the same aloofness with which the more
western portion of London had welcomed him on the previous day. Nobody
seemed to look at him. He was permitted to alight at St Paul's and make
his way up Queen Victoria Street without any demonstration. He followed
the human stream till he reached the Mansion House, and eventually
found himself at the massive building of the New Asiatic Bank, Limited.
The difficulty now was to know how to make an effective entrance. There
was the bank, and here was he. How had he better set about breaking it
to the authorities that he had positively arrived and was ready to
start earning his four pound ten _per mensem_? Inside, the bank
seemed to be in a state of some confusion. Men were moving about in an
apparently irresolute manner. Nobody seemed actually to be working. As
a matter of fact, the business of a bank does not start very early in
the morning. Mike had arrived before things had really begun to move.
As he stood near the doorway, one or two panting figures rushed up the
steps, and flung themselves at a large book which stood on the counter
near the door. Mike was to come to know this book well. In it, if you
were an _employe_ of the New Asiatic Bank, you had to inscribe
your name every morning. It was removed at ten sharp to the
accountant's room, and if you reached the bank a certain number of
times in the year too late to sign, bang went your bonus.
After a while things began to settle down. The stir and confusion
gradually ceased. All down the length of the bank, figures could be
seen, seated on stools and writing hieroglyphics in large letters. A
benevolent-looking man, with spectacles and a straggling grey beard,
crossed the gangway close to where Mike was standing. Mike put the
thing to him, as man to man.
'Could you tell me,' he said, 'what I'm supposed to do? I've just
joined the bank.' The benevolent man stopped, and looked at him with a
pair of mild blue eyes. 'I think, perhaps, that your best plan would be
to see the manager,' he said. 'Yes, I should certainly do that. He will
tell you what work you have to do. If you will permit me, I will show
you the way.'
'It's awfully good of you,' said Mike. He felt very grateful. After his
experience of London, it was a pleasant change to find someone who
really seemed to care what happened to him. His heart warmed to the
benevolent man.
'It feels strange to you, perhaps, at first, Mr--'
'Jackson.'
'Mr Jackson. My name is Waller. I have been in the City some time, but
I can still recall my first day. But one shakes down. One shakes down
quite quickly. Here is the manager's room. If you go in, he will tell
you what to do.'
'Thanks awfully,' said Mike.
'Not at all.' He ambled off on the quest which Mike had interrupted,
turning, as he went, to bestow a mild smile of encouragement on the new
arrival. There was something about Mr Waller which reminded Mike
pleasantly of the White Knight in 'Alice through the Looking-glass.'
Mike knocked at the managerial door, and went in.
Two men were sitting at the table. The one facing the door was writing
when Mike went in. He continued to write all the time he was in the
room. Conversation between other people in his presence had apparently
no interest for him, nor was it able to disturb him in any way.
The other man was talking into a telephone. Mike waited till he had
finished. Then he coughed. The man turned round. Mike had thought, as
he looked at his back and heard his voice, that something about his
appearance or his way of speaking was familiar. He was right. The man
in the chair was Mr Bickersdyke, the cross-screen pedestrian.
These reunions are very awkward. Mike was frankly unequal to the
situation. Psmith, in his place, would have opened the conversation,
and relaxed the tension with some remark on the weather or the state of
the crops. Mike merely stood wrapped in silence, as in a garment.
That the recognition was mutual was evident from Mr Bickersdyke's look.
But apart from this, he gave no sign of having already had the pleasure
of making Mike's acquaintance. He merely stared at him as if he were a
blot on the arrangement of the furniture, and said, 'Well?'
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