Great George Street, Westminster, is the address of Doyle andBroadbent, civil engineers. On the threshold one reads that thefirm consists of Mr Lawrence Doyle and Mr Thomas Broadbent, andthat their rooms are on the first floor. Most of their rooms areprivate; for the partners, being bachelors and bosom friends,live there; and the door marked Private, next the clerks' office,is their domestic sitting room as well as their reception roomfor clients. Let me describe it briefly from the point of view ofa sparrow on the window sill. The outer door is in the oppositewall, close to the right hand corner. Between this door and theleft hand corner is a hatstand and a table consisting of largedrawing boards on trestles, with plans, rolls of tracing paper,mathematical instruments and other draughtsman's accessories onit. In the left hand wall is the fireplace, and the door of aninner room between the fireplace and our observant sparrow.Against the right hand wall is a filing cabinet, with a cupboardon it, and, nearer, a tall office desk and stool for one person.In the middle of the room a large double writing table is setacross, with a chair at each end for the two partners. It is aroom which no woman would tolerate, smelling of tobacco, and muchin need of repapering, repainting, and recarpeting; but this isthe effect of bachelor untidiness and indifference, not want ofmeans; for nothing that Doyle and Broadbent themselves havepurchased is cheap; nor is anything they want lacking. On thewalls hang a large map of South America, a pictorial advertisementof a steamship company, an impressive portrait of Gladstone, andseveral caricatures of Mr Balfour as a rabbit and Mr Chamberlainas a fox by Francis Carruthers Gould.
At twenty minutes to five o'clock on a summer afternoon in 1904,the room is empty. Presently the outer door is opened, and avalet comes in laden with a large Gladstone bag, and a strap ofrugs. He carries them into the inner room. He is a respectablevalet, old enough to have lost all alacrity, and acquired an airof putting up patiently with a great deal of trouble andindifferent health. The luggage belongs to Broadbent, who entersafter the valet. He pulls off his overcoat and hangs it with hishat on the stand. Then he comes to the writing table and looksthrough the letters which are waiting for him. He is a robust,full-blooded, energetic man in the prime of life, sometimes eagerand credulous, sometimes shrewd and roguish, sometimes portentouslysolemn, sometimes jolly and impetuous, always buoyant and irresistible,mostly likeable, and enormously absurd in his most earnest moments.He bursts open his letters with his thumb, and glances through them,flinging the envelopes about the floor with reckless untidinesswhilst he talks to the valet.
BROADBENT [calling] Hodson.
HODSON [in the bedroom] Yes sir.
BROADBENT. Don't unpack. Just take out the things I've worn; andput in clean things.
HODSON [appearing at the bedroom door] Yes sir. [He turns to goback into the bedroom.
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