Colour Scheme Read Online Free PDF

young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitude towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
    “You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?” said Gaunt.
    “That’s right, sir,” said Colly. “Going to turn mudlarks, aren’t we?”
    “I haven’t said so.”
    “It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?”
    “Oh, you go to hell,” said Gaunt.
    “There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he says that’s all right and give in his card. They says it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch-and-soda, reading the paper and watching the door.”
    “That won’t do him much good,” said Dikon. “Mr. Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?”
    “Noüe!” said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. “More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr. Bell.”
    “Why?”
    “I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.”
    Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.
    “Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,” he said. “Did they give you his card?”
    Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. “Persistent sort of bloke, sir,” he said, and fished out a card.
    “Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,” said Gaunt. “You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.”
    Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card.
     
    Mr. Maurice Questing
    Wai-ata-tapu Thermal Springs
     
    Scribbled across the bottom he read:
     
    “May I have five minutes? Matter of interest to yourself. M.Q.”
     
    Mr. Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race-courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest, and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.
    When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lounge, Mr. Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.
    “Pardon me if I speak in error,” he