THE partition which separated my own office from our general outer office
in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see through it what passed
in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had it put up in place of
a wall that had been there for years,—ever since the house was built. It
is no matter whether I did or did not make the change in order that I
might derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on
business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything
they said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that
account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be
practised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.
It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose
story I am going to tell.
He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and umbrella
on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some papers from
one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly well
dressed in black,—being in mourning,—and the hand he extended with a
polite air, had a particularly well-fitting black-kid glove upon it. His
hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the
middle; and he presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my
thinking) as if he had said, in so many words: ‘You must take me, if you
please, my friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow
the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing.’