In Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he descended from his brougham in front of the offices of Messrs. Slosson, Hodge, Budge, Slosson, Maveringham, Slosson, and Vulto, Solicitors, known in the profession by the compendious abbreviation of Slossons. Edward Henry, having been a lawyer’s clerk some twenty-five years earlier, was aware of Slossons. Although on the strength of his youthful clerkship he claimed, and was admitted, to possess a very special knowledge of the law,--enough to silence argument when his opponent did not happen to be an actual solicitor,--he did not in truth possess a very special knowledge of the law,--how should he, seeing that he had only been a practitioner of shorthand?--but the fame of Slosson he positively was acquainted with! He had even written letters to the mighty Slossons. Every lawyer and lawyer’s clerk in the realm knew the greatness of Slossons, and crouched before it, and also, for the most part, impugned its righteousness with sneers. For Slossons acted for the ruling classes of England, who only get value for their money when they are buying something that they can see, smell, handle, or intimidate--such as a horse, a motor-car, a dog, or a lackey. Slossons, those crack solicitors, like the crack nerve specialists in Harley Street and the crack fortune-tellers in Bond Street, sold their invisible, inodorous, and intangible wares of advice at double, treble, or decuple their worth, according to the psychology of the customer. They were great bullies. And they were, further, great money-lenders--on behalf of their wealthier clients. In obedience to a convenient theory that it is imprudent to leave money too long in one place, they were continually calling in mortgages and re-lending the sums so collected on fresh investments, thus achieving two bills of costs on each transaction, and sometimes three, besides employing an army of valuers, surveyors, and mortgage-insurance brokers. In short, Slossons had nothing to learn about the art of self-enrichment. Three vast motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and Edward Henry’s hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle. He began by demanding the senior partner, who was denied to him by an old clerk with a face like a stone wall. Only his brutal Midland insistence, and the mention of the important letter which he had written to the firm in the middle of the night, saved him from the ignominy of seeing no partner at all. At the end of the descending ladder of partners he clung desperately to Mr. Vulto, and he saw Mr. Vulto--a youngish and sarcastic person with blue eyes, lodged in a dark room at the back of the house. It occurred fortunately that his letter had been allotted to precisely Mr. Vulto for the purpose of being answered. "You got my letter?" said Edward Henry cheerfully as he sat down at Mr. Vulto’s flat desk on the side opposite from Mr. Vulto.