CHAPTER XXI THE ORDER IN WRITINGHetherwick realised at once that Mapperley had news, and was waiting there to communicate it. But he looked not so much at Mapperley as at Mapperley's companion. Mapperley, as Hetherwick had remarked to more than one person in the course of those proceedings, concealed his sharpness under an unusually commonplace exterior; he looked, as a rule, like a young man whose ideas rarely soared above a low level. But the Jew was of a different aspect—Hetherwick was not quite sure whether he was rat or ferret. There was subtlety and craft written all over him, from his bright beady eyes to his long, thin, dirty fingers, and before Mapperley spoke his employer felt sure that in this son of Israel the clerk had found a valuable associate.
"Hullo, Mapperley!" exclaimed
