He was not kept waiting more than a minute before the clerk returned and ushered him into a room which had very little of the office in its furnishings. As he entered, a clean-shaven man in the late thirties rose from an arm-chair beside the fire. At the first glance, his appearance seemed to strike some chord in the Inspector's memory; and Flamborough found himself pursuing an elusive recollection which he failed to run to ground.
The moneylender seemed to regard the Inspector's visit as a perfectly normal event. His manner was genial without being effusive.
“Come in, Inspector,” he invited, with a gesture towards one of the comfortable chairs. “Try a cigarette?”
He proffered a large silver box, but Flamborough declined to smoke.
“And what can I do for you?” Spratton inquired pleasantly, replacing the box on the mantelpiece. “Money's very tight these days.”
“I'm not a client,” Flamborough informed him, with a slightly sardonic smile. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
The moneylender's eyes narrowed, but otherwise he showed no outward sign of his feelings.
“Then I'm rather at a loss to know what you want,” he confessed, without any lapse from his initial geniality. “I run my business strictly within the four corners of the Act. You've no complaint about that?”
The Inspector had no intention of wasting time.
“It's this affair of young Hassendean,” he explained. “The young fellow who was murdered the other day. You must have seen the case in the papers. I understand he was a client of yours.”