Free The Book of the Heathen by Robert Edric

Knightsbridge, where, unknown to each other, we had both been called to our interviews on the same day.
    I had been in London for a week, staying with one of my father’s business partners. I had dealt with some business for my father, largely concerning the shares he held in the various London companies connected with his own, and everywhere I went I was treated as he would have been treated. His partner attempted to dissuade me from accepting the Company position, but when I told him I knew he had been briefed by my father on the matter, he gave up trying.
    On several occasions when my daily round took me close to Knightsbridge I had walked back and forth in front of the Company headquarters and studied the building. It was part of an impressive terrace, with a crest in gold and black above its double entrance, and reached via a high flight of steps, on either side of which stood polished marble pillars. It was an imposing entrance into that life, one that inspired confidence and every investment a man might be willing to make.
    On the day of my interview I arrived over an hour early. I cannot explain why I did this, nor why I attempted to explain to the porter who showed me in that I had only just then arrived in London and did not wish to waste my time elsewhere. He took out a book from beneath his desk, opened it to the present date, and slowly searched for my name with his finger.
    â€˜Twelve-thirty,’ he said.
    It was then barely eleven.
    â€˜Are all those others being interviewed for the same position?’ I asked him. I was dismayed by the long list of names amid which my own sat.
    â€˜Not my business,’ the man said.
    â€˜May I wait?’ I indicated the glazed door against which the November rain was just then starting to beat.
    He considered my request as though I had posed him a conundrum, pinching his nose and pursing his lips. I understood then the full extent of his domain.
    â€˜Follow me,’ he said eventually.
    He led me to a first-floor room up a wide, portrait-lined staircase, and, as intended, I felt the eyes of all those other men looking down at me as I ascended. We came to a door marked ‘Library’, and he showed me inside, closing the door behind me before I could ask him if I would be called for or be expected to present myself elsewhere at the appointed time.
    I had thought there might be others waiting there, but I was alone. The room was lined from ceiling to floor with book-filled shelves. A fire burned in the broad fireplace, around which were placed several leather armchairs. I went to one of these and sat down. Above the mantel was a giant map of Africa, and beside it two portraits, life-size, of warrior kings. A lion skin was pinned to the wall between the high windows, and I went to inspect this and to look down at the street below. It was raining more heavily by then and the water ran in sheets over the small panes. Directly opposite, a building had recently been demolished and a blaze of timbers burned at the centre of the site, filling the street with its sodden smoke.
    I returned to the hearth, sat for several minutes, then rose and looked along the shelves. I quickly realized that most of those volumes I had understood to be books were, more accurately, bound reports and journals. The whole of one of the shorter walls was taken up with volumes of Company minutes dating from its foundation seventy years earlier. I took down the most recent of these and returned to my seat to examine it. I doubt there was a country in the world which was not in some way represented in its pages. Reports on mining, agriculture, quarrying, logging, farming and fishing from Chile to Australia, from the Baltic to Cape Horn. I remember how encouraged I was to see so many badly drawn maps accompanying these reports. I searched the volume for that part of the world for which I was hopefully bound, but found nothing.
    It was as I was about to return the volume that the door