As Frank had told Selwyn, Aleksandr Alexsandrovich Bernov had been with Sytin’s, the giant print works beyond the Sadovaya Ring. Clean-shaven, sharp-glancing, quick on the uptake, he had been impatient with his place there as head clerk, but his ideas—if they were his—were geared, perhaps irretrievably, to a large firm. He saw the business, any business, as an undeclared war against every employee below the rank of cost accountant.
