“Then make use of me by all means, my dear chap. I’m at a loose end, and only too glad to give you a hand.” “Of course if you put it like that, I should be only too pleased,” Jefferson replied, though not without a certain reluctance. “H’m! I was just wondering what would be the best job for you to tackle.” “Oh, anything that comes along, you know.” “Well, look here, I tell you what you might do,” Jefferson said suddenly. “I want a statement made out showing his holdings in the various companies of which he was a director, with the approximate value of the shares, their yield for the last financial year, his director’s fees, and all the rest of it. Manage that, could you?” “Like a shot,” said Roger with great cheerfulness, concealing his disappointment at the comparative unimportance of the task allotted to him. Such details as these could be obtained from any work of reference on the subject; he had hoped for a little insight into something that was rather less public property. Still, half a bun was better than no cake, and he settled down at the opposite side of the table and set to work willingly enough on the data with which Jefferson supplied him. From time to time he tried to peep surreptitiously at some of the documents in which the latter was immersed, but Jefferson was guarding them too jealously and Roger could obtain no clear idea of their contents. An hour later he sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief. “There you are! And a very charming and comprehensive statement, too.” “Thanks very much,” Jefferson said, taking the statement which Roger was holding out to him. “Damned good of you, Sheringham. Saved me a lot of trouble. And you’ve done it in about a quarter of the time I should have taken. Not my sort of line, this game.” “So I should imagine,” Roger observed with studied carelessness. “In fact, it’s always surprised me that you should have taken a job like this secretaryship on at all. I should have put you down as a typical open-air man, if you’ll allow me to say so. The type of Englishman that won our colonies for us, you know.” “No option,” Jefferson said, with a return to his usual curt manner. “Not my choice, I assure you. Had to take what I could jolly well get.” “Rotten, I know,” Roger replied sympathetically, watching the other curiously. In spite of himself and what he felt he knew he could not help a mild liking for this abrupt, taciturn person; a typical soldier of the wordless, unsocial school. It struck Roger at that moment that Jefferson, whom he had been inclined to regard at first as something of a sinister figure, was in reality nothing of the sort. The man was shy, exceedingly shy, and he endeavoured to hide this shyness behind a brusque, almost rude manner; and as always in such a case, this had produced an entirely mistaken first impression of the man himself behind the manner. Jefferson was downright; but it was the downrightness of honesty, Roger felt, not of villainy.