Chapter 2

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.'

I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw
him.

He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was
giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and agreeable
smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a
sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked
about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that
conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of
countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by
it.)

I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my
looking at him. Immediately he turned the parting in his hair
toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile,
'Straight up here, if you please. Off the grass!'

In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella,
and was gone.

I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, 'Who was that?'

He had the gentleman's card in his hand. 'Mr. Julius Slinkton,
Middle Temple.'

'A barrister, Mr. Adams?'

'I think not, sir.'

'I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no
Reverend here,' said I.

'Probably, from his