Hall Pycroft is a reliable and conscientious clerk. However, his last employer, Coxon & Woddhouse, was ruined, and after a few months, the money he could saved ran out. Luck came back when he could get a vacancy at Mawson & Williams great stockbroking firm. Actually, he was lucky enough to receive another offer, too generous to be declined. So generous is the offer, that Mr Pycroft soon become suspicious...
A man, named Arthur Pinner, financial agent, came to meet him at home a few days before he took his new place at Mawson. He said that an ancient colleague from Coxon had praised Pycroft's virtue as a clerk. Mr Pinner checks out the clerk's memory capacities and his knowledge of the market. Then, obviously delighted, he offers a post of business manager for a young firm dealing in import-export. So brilliant is the wage that Pycroft accepts. Mr Pinner ask him not to resign from Mawson -because of personal troubles with some manager-, and to sign down a document. Pycroft must then leave for Birmingham. There, Harry Pinner, the brother, gives him some minor duties, in an empty building. He explains that the rest of the staff will soon join them.
Puzzled and ill-at-ease with the whole story, Pycroft notices a weird detail: both man have the same golden tooth... The clerks resolve to go to Sherlock Holmes.
* see source below
The stockbroker's clerk is not a very original nor interesting story as a whole. We have a naïve character -although eventually suspicious, a swindler amateur of disguise... But in the end comes a real surprise. Not from the explanation of the "mystery" in itself, but from Pinner's reaction to an unexpected turn of events. Even gangsters may love their family...
source: BBC : "could office change from sitting to standing?"
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