"

With the sound of the word the door burst open, and we fell into the
room like an invasion, only to stop dead.

The room, which was an ordinary and neatly appointed office, appeared,
at the first glance, to be empty. But on a second and more careful
glance, we saw seated behind a very large desk with pigeonholes and
drawers of bewildering multiplicity, a small man with a black waxed
moustache, and the air of a very average clerk, writing hard. He looked
up as we came to a standstill.

"Did you knock?" he asked pleasantly. "I am sorry if I did not hear.
What can I do for you?"

There was a doubtful pause, and then, by general consent, the Major
himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward.

The letter was in his hand, and he looked unusually grim.

"Is your name P. G. Northover?" he asked.

"That is my name," replied the other, smiling.

"I think," said Major Brown, with an increase in the dark glow of his
face, "that this letter was written by you." And with a loud clap he
struck open the letter on the desk with his clenched fist. The man
called Northover looked at it with unaffected interest and merely
nodded.

"Well, sir," said the Major, breathing hard, "what about that?"

"What about it, precisely," said the man with the moustache.

"I am Major Brown," said that gentleman sternly.

Northover bowed. "Pleased to meet you, sir. What have you to say to me?"

"Say!" cried the Major, loosing a sudden tempest; "why, I want this
confounded thing settled. I want--"

"Certainly, sir," said Northover, jumping up with a slight elevation of
the eyebrows. "Will you take a chair for a moment." And he pressed
an electric bell just above him, which thrilled and tinkled in a room
beyond. The Major put his hand on the back of the chair offered him, but
stood chafing and beating the floor with his polished boot.

The next moment an inner glass door was opened, and a fair, weedy, young
man, in a frock-coat, entered from within.

"Mr Hopson," said Northover, "this is Major Brown. Will you please
finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?"

"Yes, sir," said Mr Hopson, and vanished like lightning.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said the egregious Northover, with his
radiant smile, "if I continue to work until Mr Hopson is ready. I have
some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my holiday
tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don't we? Ha! ha!"

The crimin