Then, “What letter do you mean?” he asked composedly.
“A letter which lay on H.P.’s desk in the library at Harkings when they found the body ...”
“There was a letter there then ...?”
“Haven’t you got it?”
Jeekes shook his head.
“Come inside for a minute and tell me about this,” he said.
He led Bruce into the vast smoking-room of the club. They took seats in a distant corner near the blazing fire. The room was practically deserted.
Now, Mr. Jeekes’s excessive carefulness about money had been a long-standing joke amongst his assistants when Bruce Wright had belonged to Hartley Parrish’s secretarial staff. Thrift had become with him more than a habit. It was a positive obsession. It revealed itself in such petty meannesses as a perpetual cadging for matches or small change and a careful abstention from any offer of hospitality. Never in the whole course of his service had Bruce Wright heard of Mr. Jeekes taking anybody out to lunch or extending any of the usual hospitalities of life. He was not a little surprised, therefore, to hear Jeekes ask him what he would take.
Bruce said he would take some coffee.
“Have a liqueur? Have a cigar?” said Jeekes, turning to Bruce from the somnolent waiter who had answered the bell.