"Yes, but what's on yours?" he demanded.
"In a minute, in a minute. The official police come first. Here, Charters: hold on to your hat and read these."
Charters read the first four without comment; but when he came to H.M.'s scrawled slip, he stared with a sort of grey blankness.
`Impossible!" he said. "I tell you, Merrivale, this is absolutely'
"Oh, no, it ain't, son. You think it over."
"But this person hasn't got any-.-'
Here Evelyn rose up rather stiffly from her chair. She took a few quick little walks up and down the room, her face pink. Then, without saying anything, she made a dive to tear the papers out of Charter's hand. Charters was soothing, but grim, when he put the papers behind his back.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," H.M. said austerely. He turned back. "No motive, were you goin' to say? Oh, yes; plain as your nose. But I told you it was goin' to be the big stumbling-block of the case. Point is — I say, Ken, where's that £100 note? No, wait; I got it here myself. Point is, first of all we've got to check this with the list of numbers from the, Willoughby slush. You go and get your list while we entertain friend Serpos with a little light causerie. But don't make any mistake."
Charters looked unwontedly worried as he went out: much more worried than Serpos, whom Sergeant Davis brought in at that moment. I had seen him before only in the half-light at the station; but there had been no mistake about the impression he made. The only change in his appearance was that he had taken off his clerical collar, which had always looked grotesque on him. To wear it now would have been an unpleasant parody; perhaps he felt that or perhaps he didn't, but in any case his scrawny bare neck stuck at some length out of a dead-black costume. He was as limp and weedy and blue-chinned as ever. Though his shrewd eyes behind the glasses were a little shaky with liquor, he was sober in the sense that he had full possession of all his faculties — possibly too much so. He seemed upheld and blunted by the superiority of the young intellectual. He looked on us with somewhat glazed aloofness, and smiled. The short, lank black hair stuck to his forehead, as though he had been dousing his head to cool it.
Then he saw me, and I think it jolted him a little. So far as I could judge he did not recognize me; but he knew he had seen me before, and that a game was being played somewhere. I did not say anything, or he would have spotted me. It seemed best to let him wait a few minutes first. Yet the fellow had his nerve well about him.