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Any personal feelings must be put on one side. ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand.’ Ecclesiastes.”
    I inclined my head. “Indeed. Then I shall look forward to the evening, Miss Pinker.”
    “And I to the morning, Mr.Wallis.”

    I left the warehouse exhilarated and confused in equal measure. On the one hand, I seemed to have blundered into gainful employment. On the other, there was a nascent cockstand rolling around in my trousers as the result of my flirtation with the lovely
    Emily Pinker. Well, that was easily taken care of. I took a boat to the Embankment, then crossed the Strand to Wellington Street. Here there were several cheap and cheerful establishments I had frequented before, all of a reliably high standard.Tonight, however, was a night for celebration: I had the promise of my thirty pounds advance.
    Pausing only to eat a meat pudding at the Savoy Tavern win-dow, I entered the grandest of the bagnios at Number 18. On the second floor, behind heavy curtains, was a receiving room lined with red damask where half a dozen of the prettiest girls in London reclined in their négligés on upholstered divans. But which to choose? There was a girl with glorious red ringlets; another whose powdered face was like the face of a marionette. There was a strapping six-foot German beauty, a dark-skinned French coquette, and more besides.
    I chose the one whose long, elegant fingers reminded me of Miss Emily Pinker.

P
    inker looks up as his daughter comes into his offi to
    clear the cups and jugs that litter the desk.
    “Well?” he says mildly. “What do you think of our aesthete, Emily?”
    She takes a cloth and wipes some spilled grounds from the polished mahogany before she replies.“He is certainly not quite what I expected.”
    “In what way?”
    “Younger, for one thing. And somewhat full of himself.” “Yes,” Pinker agrees. “But after giving the matter some
    thought, I decided that may not be a bad thing. An older man might be more fixed in his opinions.This one, I hope, will be less inclined to run away with your idea.”
    “It is hardly my idea,” she murmurs.
    “Do not be too modest, Emily. If you are to work with Mr. Wallis, I suspect that modesty will be a luxury you cannot afford. Of course it is your idea, and must remain so.” He twirls his safety pen between his fingers.“I wonder that he did not consider that—
    did you notice, when I talked about a Pinker being the originator, he assumed that it was me?”
    “A reasonable assumption, surely? Particularly as he had not realized at the time I was your daughter.”
    “Perhaps.” Pinker watches her as she places crockery on the tray. “Will you tell him? That the Guide originated with you, I mean?”
    She stacks up the cups.“No,” she says after a moment. “Why not?”
    “I think at this stage the less Mr.Wallis knows of our plans, the better. If I tell him, he may want to know more about the purposes for which the Guide was conceived. And anything we say might somehow get back to our competitors—even, perhaps, to Howell.”
    “As ever, you are very wise, Emily.” Her father turns his head, watching the stock ticker as it stutters and pecks at its endless flow of tape.“Let us hope, then, that young Mr.Wallis is up to the job.”

    Keep the cupping room free from outside interferences, especially sights, sounds, and smells. In addition, completely concentrate on the task at hand.
    — lingle , The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

    *

T
    he next morning it was the turn of Jenks, the senior
    secretary, to show me around. If the warehouse had seemed on the previous evening like a cathedral or a church, in the company of Jenks it soon became clear that it was actually a machine—a vast but very simple mechanism for the accumulation of profits. “The material,” as he called the coffee, came in on the high tide; was swept from point to point around the great box of the warehouse; was hulled, milled,