Лучшие расследования Шерлока Холмса / The Best of Sherlock Holmes

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“Now a pawnbroker’s business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just before pay-day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see to anything that turned up.

“�That would suit me very well,’ said I. �And the pay?’

“�Is four pounds a week.’

“�And the work?’

“�Is purely nominal.’

“�What do you call purely nominal?’

“�Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the whole time.

If you leave, you forfeit your whole position for ever. The will is very clear upon that point. You don’t comply with the conditions if you budge from the office during that time.’

“�It’s only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,’ said I.

“�No excuse will avail,’ said Mr. Duncan Ross, �neither sickness, nor business, nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your billet.

’

“�And the work?’

“�Is to copy out the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” There is the first volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and blotting-paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready to-morrow?’

“�Certainly,’ I answered.

“�Then, good-bye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once more on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to gain.’ He bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my assistant, hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good fortune.

“Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the �Encyclopædia Britannica.

’ Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bedtime I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill pen, and seven sheets of foolscap[26 - foolscap (folio) – a traditional large size of paper (8½ in x 13½ in)] paper, I started off for Pope’s-court.