He had brought with him a bright blue book, stoutly covered and brassily locked, on which was inscribed the word "Schemes."
That book was filled with writing of a most private kind and of a frenzied calculation which sprawled diagonally over pages, as for example:
Buy up old houses . . . . . . . . . say 2,000 pounds. Pull them down . . . . . . . . . . . say 500 pounds. Erect erect 50 Grand Flats . . . . . say 10,000 pounds. Paper, pante, windows, etc. . . . . say 1,000 pounds. ------ Total . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000 pounds. 50 Flats let at 80 pounds per annum. 40,000 lbs. Net profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . say 50 per cent.
NOTE.--For good middel class familys steady steady people. By this means means doing good turn to working classes solving houseing problem and making money which can be distribbuted distribbutted to the poor.
Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, late of H.M. Houssa Rifles, was, as his doorplate testified, the Managing Director of "Schemes, Ltd." He was a severe looking young man, who wore a gold-rimmed monocle on his grey check waistcoat and occasionally in his left eye. His face was of that brick-red which spoke of a life spent under tropical suns, and when erect he conveyed a momentary impression of a departed militarism.
He uncurled his feet from the table, and, picking up a letter, read it through aloud--that is to say, he read certain words, skipped others, and substituted private idioms for all he could not or would not trouble to pronounce.
"Dear Sir," (he mumbled), "as old friends of your dear uncle, and so on and so forth, we are taking the first opportunity of making widdly widdly wee.... Our Mr. Fred Pole will call upon you and place himself widdly widdly wee--tum tiddly um tum.--Yours truly."
Mr. Tibbetts frowned at the letter and struck a bell with unnecessary violence. There appeared in the doorway a wonderful man in scarlet breeches and green zouave jacket. On his head was a dull red tarbosh, on his feet scarlet slippers, and about his waist a sash of Oriental audacity. His face, large and placid, was black, and, for all his suggestiveness of the brilliant East, he was undoubtedly negroid.
The costume was one of Mr. Tibbetts's schemes. It was faithfully copied from one worn by a gentleman of colour who serves the Turkish coffee at the Wistaria Restaurant. It may be said that there was no special reason why an ordinary business man should possess a bodyguard at all, and less reason why he should affect one who had the appearance of a burlesque Othello, but Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, though a business man, was not ordinary.