4. First Steps in a Business Career


The City received Mike with the same aloofness with which the more
western portion of London had welcomed him on the previous day. Nobody
seemed to look at him. He was permitted to alight at St Paul's and make
his way up Queen Victoria Street without any demonstration. He followed
the human stream till he reached the Mansion House, and eventually
found himself at the massive building of the New Asiatic Bank, Limited.

The difficulty now was to know how to make an effective entrance. There
was the bank, and here was he. How had he better set about breaking it
to the authorities that he had positively arrived and was ready to
start earning his four pound ten _per mensem_? Inside, the bank
seemed to be in a state of some confusion. Men were moving about in an
apparently irresolute manner. Nobody seemed actually to be working. As
a matter of fact, the business of a bank does not start very early in
the morning. Mike had arrived before things had really begun to move.
As he stood near the doorway, one or two panting figures rushed up the
steps, and flung themselves at a large book which stood on the counter
near the door. Mike was to come to know this book well. In it, if you
were an _employe_ of the New Asiatic Bank, you had to inscribe
your name every morning. It was removed at ten sharp to the
accountant's room, and if you reached the bank a certain number of
times in the year too late to sign, bang went your bonus.

After a while things began to settle down. The stir and confusion
gradually ceased. All down the length of the bank, figures could be
seen, seated on stools and writing hieroglyphics in large letters. A