The truth was that I _had_ left Rixon Tebb & Masters'--had left the place, and had achieved the seeming miracle of being permitted to return. Such a marvel was without precedent, and I cannot say that it had been accomplished altogether by my own contrivance. I said a little while ago that there were eight of us, had over in a lump from the agency; I also said that only by way of the junior clerkship was any advancement possible from that slavery of addressing envelopes that might have been for company circularisation or might have been sent over in shiploads to the Flushing and Middleburg book-makers for all we knew; and I had had the signal luck--I forgot this when I said that luck had always passed me by on the other side--to present myself for reappointment, without any hope whatever of getting it, at the very moment when Polwhele had succeeded to this post.
How Polwhele had chanced to be occupied as he had been occupied when I had presented myself I understand only too well. Sneaking, prying, slandering, peaching--you didn't become Rixon Tebb & Masters' junior clerk without having been through the mill of all this and more. Poor worm, he had got so used to it that he couldn't help it. Having attained to the junior clerkship, he was going to work up through the seniors by the same means, I suppose, and the means he had been making use of, at the moment of my coming upon him, had been the furtive rummaging of a waste-paper basket that had come--I knew this by the pattern of it--from Mr Masters' private office.
It had been, of course, the perfect opportunity for me, who was subdued to sneaking and peaching also. I had leaned my elbow on the brass rail of a tall desk and stood looking down on him--such a long way down it seemed--he was on his knees.
"Hallo, Polwhele!" I had suddenly said. "Going to put Samson Evitt out of business?" And then I waited to see how he took it.
I don't suppose you've ever heard of Samson Evitt. He has been a solicitor; at that time he described himself as a waste-paper dealer; and what he really did, and for all I know does still, was to buy up, through a hundred miserable agents, and on the chance of coming upon some private letter or secret draft, the contents of such receptacles as Polwhele's fingers had been deep in at that moment.