“Not from a side of leather.”
“Not even by sight?”
“Never laid eyes on him. He’s a new one to my lamps.”
Shannon’s terse replies seemed to issue with husky quietude from the uppermost depths of his throat. They were neither refined nor respectful. They smacked of closer relations than those of master and servant, as also appeared in his confidential attitude and air of assurance. For he was bowed over the desk, with both hands spread upon it, a broad, compact, muscular man of fifty, with the bullet head of a pugilist and the strength of a bull. He was clad in livery, nevertheless—a bottle-green jacket and trousers, trimmed with black braid.
“He stated, you say, that he has private business with me.” Doctor Devoll gazed up from the card with a sinister gleam in his cold blue eyes.
“That’s what he said.”
“But not to what it relates?”
“Not he!” Shannon grinned. “He ducked my question, as if it were a right swing. When I have private business with a man, says he, I don’t confide it to his servant. That was how he countered.”
Doctor Devoll’s thin lips took on a smile that did not improve his facial expression, usually very agreeable and benign. He said deliberately:
“You may show him in, Shannon. Wait. Don’t let his business be too private, not too private, Shannon,” he added significantly, pointing to a curtained door. “Slip around there after admitting him and wait until he goes. You may be needed.”