Reluctant sinners / by Sidney Fairway.

  • Fairway, Sidney, 1879-1947.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Reluctant sinners / by Sidney Fairway. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    IT was Harry Gastor who came to the rescue. “There’s a job going down Aldgate way,” he said, one morning. “A chap told me about it at lunch yesterday. It’s an accountant’s job of some sort. Why don’t you have a cut at it ?” “What sort of business ?” Gastor laughed. “Some religious stunt I should think, judging by what I was told. The fellow, Jim Laker, is a ferrety little bounder, sharp as a needle, crooked as a corkscrew, and looks it. The sort of chap who carries about florins and hopes to get change for half a crown. Well, anyhow, he wasn’t smart enough to keep his job so he applied at this place. The boss seems to be a sort of blend of Roger Tichborne, Dempsey, Casanova and General Booth— rolls of fat, affability, philanthropy with a touch of dynamite.” “Well, he looks at the candidate pensively for a while. ‘This business,’ he says, quietly, ‘is still old- fashioned enough to believe that honesty is the best policy.’ ‘Yes,’ says Jim, rather taken aback, ‘of course !’ ‘Do you ever look in the glass ?’ asks the other. ‘Yes,’ snaps Jim, taking a sudden dislike to the fat man and realizing that his modest eight stone would be no match for this obese leviathan. ‘And I can see my face in it, too . . . the whole of it ... all at once !’ “There was a ruler on the desk. It just missed Jim’s head and demolished a plaster Venus, standing on a pedestal in the corner. He’s probably mad, but the girls in the office told Jim he was quite a decent sort of chap provided one kept on the right