Henry Northcote

“And now,” said the solicitor, “as the decks are clear, let me say this is a rather odd affair which has sent me hungry about the streets of London at an unpleasant hour.”

“Am I not surprisingly cool about it?” said Northcote, with a flushed face, balancing his empty wine-glass on the handle of a knife, “considering that this business of yours is destined to mark the turning-point in my career.”

“When a man begins to talk of his career,” said the solicitor, “it is safe to infer that he has taken the wrong quantity of liquor. Waiter!”

“Sare?”

“Tell Jools we want another pint of this filthy stuff—this what-do-you-call-it?—with which he is poisoning us. And, Alphonse, have a couple of Welsh rarebits ready by the time we want them.”

The waiter withdrew, walking delicately; and the solicitor bent across the table towards his companion in a manner of confidential gravity.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” said he, “but you have done no circuit work?”

“Hitherto I have not soared beyond a police-court,” said the young man, with perfect frankness. “And even there I have only made a public display of my incapacity on half a dozen occasions.”

“A beginner one might say, yet an ambitious one.”

“Where do you get the ambition from?”

“It is in the color of your eyes. Besides, have you not a habit of turning your phrases?”

“If I did not know you to be a connoisseur in men of promise I should not be convinced.”

“That’s my foible, right enough,” said the solicitor, with a laugh. “A connoisseur in men of promise. Samuel Whitcomb owes his own reputation to that, and he is proud to believe that the reputations of half a score of those who are in every way his superiors are to be traced to that source.”

“Laying aside the question of superiority, all the world knows it.”

“I gave Finnemore Jones his first brief,” said the solicitor, immodestly. “I provided Cooper, Howard, and Harrington with the opportunities that made them famous.”

“And above all,” said the young advocate, measuring with a stealthy eye the man before him, “are you not the discoverer of Michael Tobin?”

“Ha!” cried the solicitor, as he brought his fist upon the table with an air of unmistakable triumph, “I was holding that back.”

“As the crown of your achievement?”

“Yes; Michael Tobin is almost here. But how do you come to suspect it, when at present his quality is only known to the few?”

“I am one of them,” said Northcote, looking his companion imperturbably in the eyes.

Such a cool affirmation seemed to delight the solicitor.

“Well, I should not be surprised if you were,” he said, with a violent chuckle. “If I had not had some such suspicion I might not have climbed up all those dark stairs at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”

“Without your dinner.”

“Without my dinner. Why, if that fellow hasn’t forgotten the black currant jelly. But here he comes with his poisonous claret.”

“Tobin is a brilliant man,” said Northcote, poising his glass after having replenished it. “Irish to the bone; a real discovery; ought to go far. But far as he ought to go and will go, there is one name in your list that will surpass him.”

“That is where I cannot agree with you, my son,” said the solicitor, with confidential and parental bonhomie, for this subject lay at the source of his intellectual pride. “You must know somewhat to have found out about Tobin; but when you name his superior you betray your youth.”

“I concede it is quite impossible for me to name Tobin’s superior without betraying my youth.”

“Go to,” said the solicitor, with an air of indulgence that he reserved for the young and promising. “Don’t labor the point. It wants experience to detect greatness in the shell. Michael Tobin will easily be the first upon my list.”

“There is one who will surpass Michael Tobin,” said the young man.

“Not among those I have mentioned.”

“True. As is usual with the prophet, you don’t dare to affirm the authentic name.”

“Upon my word I can’t think who you mean!”

“One Henry Northcote.”

The solicitor broke forth in a suppressed shout of laughter.

“Good!” he said; “you’ll do. Fill up your glass and we’ll get to work. And I’m glad your talent is so remarkable, because I’ve got some business here that is likely to tax it.”

“It is increasingly clear to me that you are the genie,” said the young advocate in a low voice, and fetching a deep breath.