"Study! I won't have time," said the Sergeant, reaching for his hat. "I'm going to be busy this evening."
"You'd better relax. You've had a pretty strenuous day. What are you going to do?"
"Mug up the Bible," said the Sergeant bitterly.
Chapter Seven
It was late when Hannasyde left his room at Scotland Yard, and when at last he went home he had learnt enough from his perusal of Ernest Fletcher's papers to make him visit the offices of Mr. Abraham Budd shortly after nine o'clock the following morning.
Mr. Budd did not keep him waiting. The typist who had carried his card in to her employer returned almost immediately, pop-eyed with curiosity, ready to dramatise, as soon as a suitable audience should present itself, this thrilling and sinister call, and invited him, in a fluttering voice, to follow her.
Mr. Budd, who rose from a swivel-chair behind his desk as Hannasyde was ushered in, and came eagerly forward to greet him, corresponded so exactly with Sergeant Hemingway's description of him, that Hannasyde had to bite back a smile. He was a short, fat man, with a certain oiliness of skin, and an air of open affability that was almost oppressive. He shook Hannasyde by the hand, pressed him into a chair, offered him a cigar, and said several times that he was very glad to see him.
"Very glad, I am, Superintendent," he said. "What a shocking tragedy! What a terrible affair! I have been most upset. As I told the Sergeant at Scotland Yard, it struck me all of a heap. All of a heap," he repeated impressively. "For I respected Mr. Fletcher. Yes, sir, I respected him. He had a Brain. He had a Grasp of Finance. Over and over again I've said it: Mr. Fletcher had a Flair. That's the word. And now he's gone."
"Yes," said Hannasyde unemotionally. "As you say. You did a good deal of business with him, I understand?"
Mr. Budd managed to convey by a glance out of his astute little eyes and a gesture of the hands which betrayed his race, an answer in which assent was mingled with deprecation.