The Safety Pin

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The Safety Pin
by J. S. Fletcher
(1924)

CONTENTS
I. THE THIRTEENTH CLIENT
II. WHAT ABOUT THE BED?
III. THE SAND PIT
IV. THE SAFETY PIN
V. THE PICTURE POSTCARD
VI. THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT
VII. THE CREVICED WALL
VIII. MISS PRETTY'S WAY
IX. BIRDS OF A FEATHER
X. TURN OF THE LADIES
XI. THE GOLD WATCH
XII. ARRESTED
XIII. STILL OPEN
XIV. WHICH GOLD MINE?
XV. THE UNCURTAINED WINDOW
XVI. DISCOVERIES AND AMBITIONS
XVII. THE WOOD AND THE ORCHARD
XVIII. GREEN EYES
XIX. THE MAN WHO GOT OUT
XX. COIL WITHIN COIL
XXI. BARTLETT'S HEARTHRUG
XXII. CHECKMATE
XXIII. MELLAPONT'S EXHIBIT
XXIV. THE ART OF ARRANGEMENT
XXV. THE GREEN BAY TREE

THE SAFETY PIN
CHAPTER 1
- THE THIRTEENTH CLIENT
Shelmore, then three-and-twenty years old, had been in practice as a solicitor for precisely six months, and, probably because he had set up in his own native city of Southernstowe, the end of that period found him with exactly twelve clients on his roll. His line was the eminently safe one of conveyancing and the clients were profitable ones; he knew enough of his profession to know that his first half-year's experience was satisfactory and promising. Another fledgling, lower down the street, a former fellow-articled-clerk, admitted at the same time as himself, who had gone in for police-court practice, was doubtless having livelier times, but not making so much substantial gain; his office, perhaps, was more crowded, but Shelmore preferred the dignified quiet of his own, wherein he and his clients talked of nothing less important than the transference or acquisition of real estate.
In a youthful fashion he was somewhat proud of that office. At the street door there was a beautiful, highly-polished brass plate, engraved in the very best of taste: Francis D. Shelmore, Solicitor; at the head of the stair leading up from it there was a smaller one, similarly inscribed, on an oak door; within that door, in the dark room liberally provided with all the proper show of papers, parchments, and japanned tin boxes, sat Shelmore's one clerk, an astute, sharp-eyed, precocious youth named Simmons Hackdale; within an inner door, duly covered with green baize, sat Shelmore himself, in a private office very neatly and tastefully furnished and ornamented.
Whenever one of the twelve clients came, Shelmore was always busy, and the client was kept waiting a little, the time of waiting being adjusted by the clerk in accordance with his own estimate of the client's value and importance. But, in plain truth, Shelmore had a lot of time on his hands, and it was a good deal to his credit that he spent some of it in improving his own knowledge of law, and some in giving a gratuitous course of legal education to his--unarticled--clerk. Shelmore, having been a bit of a precisian since boyhood, kept exact hours. He arrived at the office at exactly ten minutes to ten every morning; at ten minutes to five every afternoon he prepared to leave it. He was preparing to leave it now--a certain Wednesday afternoon in the last week of what had been an unusually fine September, He had tidied up his desk and put away his books and assumed his hat and overcoat; his umbrella, tightly rolled, stood ready to his hand; close by it lay the Times, neatly folded, to be carried home to his aunt. Miss Olivia Chauncey, with whom he lived, in an old-fashioned house in the oldest part of Southernstowe. He stood by the window, fitting on his gloves with meticulous precision; thus engaged, he looked out on the scene beneath and in front; he had gone through that performance every afternoon for six months; it would not have disconcerted him if he had been assured by some infallible prophet that he would go through it every afternoon for many and many a long year to come. It was all part of what he wished and liked--a well-ordered, calm, systematic life routine, in, which tomorrow should be as today.
Yet, at that very moment, had Shelmore but known it, things were stirring close by, which were not according to any routine of his, and were going to break in upon the regularity of his daily life. As he stood there, looking unemotionally out of the window, he saw something which, if it did not exactly excite him, at any rate interested him. The block in which his office was situate was a corner one. It commanded views of a good bit of the centre of the old city, and in particular a full prospect of the front of the ancient Chancellor Hotel. And what interested Shelmore was the sudden appearance of a girl at the entrance of the court-yard of the Chancellor--a girl, who, for a second or two stood on the curb, looking doubtfully and inquiringly around, as people look at unfamiliar things and scenes. She was a tallish girl; she was slim and willowy; he had a convinced idea that she was young and pretty;