A Man of Means

This was the problem which was furrowing the brow of Mr. Julian Fineberg, of Bury St. Edwards, one sunny morning when Roland Bleke knocked at his door; and such was its difficulty that only at the nineteenth knock did Mr. Fineberg raise his head. "Come in-that dashed woodpecker out there!" he shouted, for it was his habit to express himself with a generous strength towards the junior members of his staff. The young man who entered looked exactly like a second clerk in a provincial seed-merchant's office-which, strangely enough, he chanced to be. His chief characteristic was an intense ordinariness. He was a young man; and when you had said that of him you had said everything. There was nothing which you would have noticed about him, except the fact that there was nothing to notice. His age was twenty-two and his name was Roland Bleke.