In assembling her staff Ben experienced a certain amount of luck in
stumbling upon Miss Peterson.
Miss Peterson was one of those plain, capable but not originative women
whose destiny it is to work loyally for others. And Ben was just the
kind of other for whom they work with the most zeal and fidelity. From
Miss Peterson's position as keeper of the outer office and the door,
she came to be known as Jan, which was short for janitress, and but for
her "The Beck and Call" would probably not have lasted a month. With
her untiring devotion to buttress it, it turned the corner.
Jan arrived early and left late, and, what is more, refused to go out
for lunch, but ate it furtively at her desk. Whether men eat too much
lunch or women too little is a question that has never been settled;
and as they are totally different creatures there is probably no need
for any comparisons. Suffice it to say that Jan could not be induced to
improve her scanty and hasty repast, and seemed to be fairly healthy
on it. A certain element of self-sacrifice or even mortification was
necessary to her happiness; she was a mixture of watchdog and nun.
If ever she permitted herself a luxury or accepted an invitation to
a party of pleasure, she did it as though performing a penance. Such
was her own humility and her innate conviction that this is a vale of
tears, and ought to be, that every happiness or delight was a cause of
suspicion and surprise. Praise-God-Barebones and his companions planted
the English soil deeper than they knew.
The only other member of the staff, at first, was a precocious London
boy, certainly no Puritan, who was known by his own wish as Dolly. His
real name was Arthur, which his friends, all as Cockney as himself,
soon converted to Arfur, not only because that was their general
tendency but because his surname Crowne set up an additional allurement
to do so. Arfur Crowne in course of time was reduced, on the lines
often followed in the evolution of nicknames, to 'arf a dollar, and
from this it had been an easy gradation to Dolly.
Dolly's age was sixteen, and he was small for it. He was also old for
it, in so far as dress and knowledge of the world, or at any rate of
London, were concerned. He always wore a bowler hat and carried a
cane, and in his possession, on view but never known to be worn, was
a pair of smart tan gloves. In addition to an exhaustive acquaintance
with London's houses of variety, even in the outlying districts,
football heroes, cricket heroes, cinema stars and probably winners on
the flat, Dolly could give you in a moment the number of the bus you
needed for any route.
Where he got the money to visit so many places of entertainment, no one
at first knew; for his wages could not well be large and there was no
reason to suspect him of dishonesty. But he was so regularly in funds
as to lead to the suspicion that he had private means and was working
at "The Beck and Call" for a wager. So Tubby Toller maintained. And,
as he said, it would be very dull to find out where the money came
from, for one of the compensations in this dreary life of ours is the
opportunity we get for wondering how other people can afford it.
But later the secret came out, for Mr. Harford gave it away. Mr.
Harford's range of interests on the pleasant planet on which he found
himself was, I ought to say, sufficiently wide to include the too often
pathetic efforts to come in first on the part of those untrustworthy
but beautiful animals with noble heads, glossy coats, and four slender
legs on which most English men, and many English women, "have
something" every day. It was Dolly's special privilege to meet in his
lunch hour mysterious acquaintances with special information about
the "three-thirty," and this information Mr. Harford was delighted to
receive. Now and then, of course, the horse "went down," but in the
main the two confederates did very well.
Dolly's post was by the telephone in the outer office, which, on
occasions, could be connected with another instrument on Ben's desk;
but his dominating desire and ambition was, by his own knowledge
and discretion, to render any such connexion unnecessary. So far
from sharing Jan's willingness to lunch in, Dolly was off, with his
gloves and cane, immediately the clock struck one--to the Ritz or
Savoy, according to Jack Harford. He was never late in returning, but
sometimes stood on the step finishing a cigarette until the hands
pointed to two.
Mr. Harford and Dolly may have been almost on an equality, but it
was one of the jokes at "The Booklovers' Rest" that Dolly was too
aristocratic to have any friendly relations with the boy--Ernie
Bones--who opened and shut that abode of culture, and carried to the
post such parcels as were dispatched, and once a month stuck stamps
on myriad catalogues. But there are grades, right through the social
scale, and Dolly stood on a plane far above Ernie's.
Ernie had never worn or carried gloves in his life. They would have
looked as strange on him as a monocle in the eye of a London roadmender.