Making Money

time—exactly on time—and he kept his room scrupulously clean and, of course, he was a professional gentleman. All right, he had a haunted look about him and there was that odd business with him carefully adjusting the clock before he went to work every day, but she was prepared to put up with that. There was no shortage of lodgers in this crowded city, but clean ones who paid regularly and never complained about the food were thin enough on the ground to be worth cherishing, and if they put a strange padlock on their wardrobe, well, least said soonest mended.
    “Yes, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. “I always know it’s you because there is a distinctive one-point-four seconds between the knocks.”
    “Really? Fancy!” said Mrs. Cake, who rather liked the sound of distinctive. “I always say you’re the man for the adding up. Er…there is going to be three gentlemen downstairs asking after you…”
    “When?”
    “In about two minutes,” said Mrs. Cake.
    Bent stood up in one unfolding moment, like a jack-in-the-box.
    “Men? What will they be wearing?”
    “Well, er, just, you know, clothes?” said Mrs. Cake uncertainly. “Black clothes. One of them will give me his card, but I won’t be able to read it because I’ll have my wrong spectacles on. Of course, I could go and put the right ones on, obviously, but I get such a headache if I don’t let a premonition go right. Er…and now you’re going to say, ‘Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake.’” She looked at him expectantly. “Sorry, but I had a premonition that I’d come up to tell you I had a premonition, so I thought I’d better. It’s a bit silly, but none of us can change how we’re made, I always say.”
    “Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. Mrs. Cake gave him a grateful look before hurrying away.
    Mr. Bent sat down again. Life with Mrs. Cake’s premonitions could get a little intricate at times, especially now they were getting recursive, but it was part of the Elm Street ethos that you were charitable toward the foibles of others in the hope of a similar attitude to your own. He liked Mrs. Cake, but she was wrong. You could change how you were made. If you couldn’t, there was no hope.
    After a couple of minutes he heard the ring of the bell, the muted conversation, and went through the motions of surprise when she knocked on his door.
    Bent inspected the visiting card.
    “Mr. Cosmo? Oh. How strange. You had better send them up.” He paused, and looked around. Subdivision was rife in the city now. The room was exactly twice the size of the bed, and it was a narrow bed. Three people in here would have to know one another well. Four would know one another well whether they wanted to or not. There was a small chair, but Bent kept it on top of the wardrobe, out of the way.
    “Perhaps just Mr. Cosmo,” he suggested.
    The man was proudly escorted in a minute later.
    “Well, this is a wonderful little hideaway, Mr. Bent,” Cosmo began. “So handy for, um—”
    “Nearby places,” said Bent, lifting the chair off the wardrobe. “There you are, sir. I don’t often have visitors.”
    “I’ll come straight to the point, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo, sitting down. “The directors do not like the, ha, direction things are going. I’m sure you don’t, either.”
    “I could wish for them to be otherwise, sir, yes.”
    “He should have held a director’s meeting!”
    “Yes, sir, but bank rules say he needn’t do so for a week, I’m afraid.”
    “He will ruin the bank!”
    “We are, in fact, getting many new customers, sir.”
    “You can’t possibly like the man? Not you, Mr. Bent?”
    “He is easy to like, sir. But you know me, sir. I do not trust those who laugh too easily. The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth. He should not be in charge of your bank.”
    “I like to think about it as our bank, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo generously, “because, in a very real way, it is ours.”
    “You are too kind, sir,” said Bent, staring down at the floorboards visible through the hole in the cheap oilcloth which was itself laid bare, in a very real way, by the bald patch in the carpet which, in a very real way, was his.
    “You joined us quite young, I believe,” Cosmo went on. “My father himself gave you a job as trainee clerk, didn’t he?”
    “That is correct, sir.”
    “He was very…understanding, my father,” said Cosmo. “And rightly so. No sense in dredging up the past.” He