"Take my card up to Mr. Fenton," said Naball, producing his pasteboard from an elegant card-case, "and tell him I want to see him for a few minutes."
The oleaginous clerk disappeared, and several other clerks looked up from their writing at the detective with idle curiosity. Naball glanced sharply at their faces, and smiled blandly to himself as he recognised several whom he had seen in very equivocal places. Little did the clerks know that this apparently indolent young man knew a good deal about their private lives, and was anticipating coming into contact with several of them in a professional manner.
Presently the oily clerk returned with a request to Mr. Naball to walk into the manager's office, which that gentleman did in a leisurely manner; and the shiny clerk, closing the door softly, returned to his position behind the shiny counter.
Mr. Fenton sat at a handsome writing-table, which was piled up with disorderly papers, and looked sharply at the detective as he took a seat.
"Well, Naball," he said, in his strident voice, "what is the matter? Can't give you more than five minutes--time's money here. Yes, sir."
"Five minutes will do," replied the detective, tapping his varnished boots with his cane. "It's about that robbery."
"Oh, indeed!" Mr. Fenton laid down his pen, and, leaning back in his chair, prepared to listen.
"Yes! I've been looking after Villiers."
"Quite right," said the American. "That's the man I suspect--fixed up anything, eh?"
"Not yet, but I was down Little Bourke Street last night in an opium den, to which Villiers goes, and I found this."