A Town like Alice

that. Lester Robinson came into my office with a sheaf of papers in his hand as I was reading her letter for the third time; I laid the letter down. "My Paget girl," I said. "You know-that Macfadden estate that we're trustees for. She's not coming home after all. She's gone on from Malaya to Australia."
    He glanced at me, and I suppose the disappointment that I felt showed in my face, because he said gently, "I told you she was old enough to make a packet of trouble for us." I looked up at him quickly to see what he meant by that, but he began talking about an unadopted road in Colchester, and the moment passed.
    I went on with my work, but the black mood persisted and it was with me when I reached the club that night. I settled down after dinner in the library with a volume of Horace because I thought the mental exercise required to read the Latin would take my mind off things and put me in a better frame of mind. But I had forgotten my Horace, I suppose, because a phrase I had not read or thought about for forty years suddenly stared up at me from the page and brought me up with a round turn,
    - Dulce ridentem lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem.
    It had been a part of my youth, that phrase, as I suppose it is a part of the youth of many young men who have been in love. I could not bear to go on reading Horace after that, and I sat thinking of sweetly smiling, soft-spoken Lalage on her way to Alice Springs in a long-distance bus, until I broke away from morbid fancies and got up and put the book back in the shelf.
    It must have been about a week after that that Derek Harris came into my room as the client went out. Derek is one of our two articled clerks, and one day I expect to make him a partner; a pleasant fresh-faced lad. He said, "Could you spare a few minutes for a stranger, sir?"
    "What sort of stranger?" I inquired.
    He said, "A man called Harman. He came about an hour ago without any appointment and asked to see you. Sergeant Gunning asked if I would see him as you were engaged, and I had a talk with him, but it's you that he wants to see. I understand that it's something to do with Miss Paget."
    I knew now where I had heard that name before, but it was quite incredible. I asked, "What sort of a man is he?"
    He grinned broadly. "Some sort of a colonial, I should think. Probably Australian. He's an outdoor type, anyway."
    "Is he a reasonable person?"
    "Oh, I think so, sir. He's some sort of a countryman, I should say."
    It was all beginning to fit in, and yet it was incredible that an Australian stockman should have found his way to my office in Chancery Lane. "Is his name Joseph, by any chance?" I asked.
    "You know him, do you, sir? Joe Harman. Shall I ask him to come up?"
    I nodded. "I'll see him now." Harris went down to fetch him, and I stood by my window looking out into the grey street, wondering what this visit meant and how it had come about, and how much of my client's business could I tell this man.
    Harris showed him in, and I turned from the window to meet him.
    He was a fair-haired man, about five feet ten in height. He was thickset but not fat; I judged him to be between thirty and thirty-five years old. His face was deeply tanned but his skin was clear; he had very bright blue eyes. He was not a handsome man; his face was too square and positive for that, but it was a simple and good-natured face. He walked towards me with a curious stiff gait.
    I shook hands with him. "Mr Harman?" I said. "My name is Strachan. Do you want to see me?" And as I spoke I was unable to resist the temptation to look down at his hand. There was a huge scar on the back of it.
    He said a little awkwardly, "I don't want to keep you long." He was ill at ease and obviously embarrassed.
    "Not at all," I said. "Sit down, Mr Harman, and tell me what I can do for you." I put him in the client's chair before my desk and gave him a cigarette. He pulled from his pocket a tin box of wax matches of a style that was strange to me, and cracked one expertly with his thumbnail without burning himself. He was wearing a very ready-made suit, quite new, and an unusually ornamental tie for London wear.
    "I was wondering if you could tell me about Miss Jean Paget," he said. "Where she lives, or anything like that."
    I smiled. "Miss Paget is a client of mine, Mr Harman," I said. "You evidently know that. But a client's business is entirely confidential, you know. Are you a friend of hers?"
    The question seemed to embarrass him still further.