Mr. Theseus Langdon was one of those smiling and expansive gentlemen, smooth of gesture and rather too practised of poise, who are all of an engaging frankness. They seem always to impart confidences, with low-voiced diplomacy and a deprecating smile. They can speak of the weather as though they were telling international secrets. In person Mr. Langdon was inclined to portliness. He had a pink scrubbed face, thin brown hair brushed back from a low forehead, eyes like those of an alert dog, and a broad mouth. He sat back on the divan with both ease and dignity, his well-manicured hands in his lap. His cutaway and striped trousers were unwrinkled, and his wing collar looked cool despite the heat. He rose, bowing to the newcomers.
Thirty-seven, Gray's Inn Square," said Mr. Langdon, as though he were making an epigram. "Gentlemen! At your service!" Then he sat down again and resumed in his easy voice: "As I was saying concerning this dreadful affair, Inspector, you will appreciate my difficulties. Whatever information I possess is at your disposal, I need not tell you. But, as Mr. Burke so admirably put it a moment ago, Mr. Depping was an oyster. Precisely so. A veritable oyster, I assure you."
Murch glowered at him. But his dogged, gruff voice persisted. " Tes this, then. Which you won't deny. You'm the solicitor both for Mr. Depping that was, and for Louis Spinelli—"
"Excuse me, please. For Mr. Stuart Travers."
"Eh, eh! I be and told you his name is Spinelli—"
"So far as I have any knowledge, Mr. Murch," said Langdon, smiling composedly, "my client's name is Mr. Stuart Travers. You see?"
"But Spinelli has told us-"
At this point Dr. Fell rumbled warningly. Inspector Murch nodded, and fell back. For a time the doctor sat tapping his pencil against the writing pad, and blinking at it. Then he raised his eyes.
"Let's get this straight from the beginning, Mr. Langdon. We happen to know that Spinelli, or Travers, put in a trunk call to you this afternoon. What you advised him is neither here nor there, at the moment. Let's concern ourselves with Depping. You have told us" — he held out his pudgy fingers and checked off the points—"that you have been his legal adviser for five years. That you know nothing about him, except that he was a British subject who had spent some years in America. That he made no will, and leaves an estate which you estimate at about fifty thousand pounds—"
"Sadly depreciated, I fear," interposed Langdon, shaking his head with a sorrowful smile. "Sadly."