I love the different ways Herbert Knox and Mike describe eachother. Knox is like “Yeh, he was a bit odd, there were some unexplainable stuff happening around him, but he was a regular customer!”
And then there’s Mike who sounds absolutely disgusted when saying “a nasty, grubby little man who stank of sweat and self-importance” which sounds so different from the sentence before and after
RIGHT it's so funny!!
But then I've been reading Herbert Knox's statement again and maybe Mike's influenced my perceptions, or maybe I just dislike rich people or something, but like-
He seems a bit of a prick.
The guy admits that Mike has dropped tens of thousands of pounds on books at his shop, then goes on about how the book unsettles him and how it's such a pain to have to go about authenticating it, and then proceeds to tell us that despite this & despite having already got tons of money out of the guy, he charged him double the price of an already extremely pricy book.
I feel like this is only worse because he didn't even buy the book from anyone in the first place! He got it from this lady's will, along with 'the vast majority of her stock', so it's not like he was hurting for money or anything. He's just a rich capitalist dick.
Then when the cheque bounces, he says (and I quote): "After no small amount of consideration, I decided that the only decent thing to do was to actually go to him and discuss the matter."
Like what about this was decent? Closing up the shop early, just to stalk him to his home and demand a book back was 'decent'? After all the money the guy's already spent at your store?
And then following it up with "I felt like I owed it to Mike"?? Like - the audacity??
