"Sit down, Creech, sit down," said the "pardners" together, "we want to have a talk with you about the new house." Here Creech grunted. "Or rather," the elder one went on, "the old house;" whereon the cashier smiled, as much as to say that that was a far more congenial subject to him. Then Alfred, the elder brother, continued: "You know more about this house, Creech, than anybody else." Creech gave a grunt again here, which tailed off into a sigh. "Why, bless my soul! you've been here five years longer than I've been in existence--there's no one else knows as much about us as you do." "I came here a boy of sixteen," said Creech, looking at the clock on the wall as though it was a kind of calendar of his career, "and I'm sixty-five now. That makes forty-nine years. Come Easter, I've been here fifty years. It's a long while!" "It is a long while," said the younger partner, Henry. "But you're all right, you know, Creech. Cazalet's look after those who have served them long and well. When you feel like retirement and a pension, you say so. Only, I don't know how we shall get on without you. However, the retirement is a long way off yet, I hope. Let us talk about the present." "What we want to know is this," said Alfred, "and you're the person to tell us. What is there stored away down in the vaults below the strong room? We haven't been down there for years; not since we were boys and our father used to let us go down sometimes. There seemed to be only an awful lot of mouldering rubbish, and it'll all have to be gone over and either destroyed or fetched up before the builders go to work on the foundations." "So there is a lot of rubbish," replied Creech, "though I haven't been down there myself for over twenty years. The last time I was down was when the Prince o' Wales went to return thanks at St. Paul's. I remember it because I found a bottle of port wine on a ledge, and we drank his health as he went by. I told your father about it afterwards, and he said it must have been some of the Waterloo port his father had had given him." "What else is there?" "A lot of rubbish," repeated Creech. "There's several old boxes, most of them burst open, with leases, I should say, belonging to dead and gone customers of the bank, and a heap of broken old furniture that belonged upstairs when the family lived over the bank. I found a fine copper warming-pan, that Mr. Jones made me a present of; and I think there's an old spinet down there, and broken chairs and tables, and office stuff, and a basket full of broken glass and crockery, and that sort of thing." "Humph!" said the elder brother. "Leases, eh? We ought to look into those. If they're ours we ought to preserve them, and if they belonged to customers who have left descendants, they should be returned. They may still be of the greatest value. Who can tell?"