Chapter 10
OFF FLEET Street is a cheery little club, situate in a converted warehouse, which is the resort of newspaper men, and at this hour of the morning the library was empty. Peter pulled an armchair up to the fire, took out the purse and examined its contents.
The key irritated him. There had once been a fairly elaborate inscription on the thumbpiece, and there were still traces of the lettering, which had been obliterated by a file. An amateur had done this: the edges were cut sharp, and the filing had been performed by a clumsy hand, for there were scratches half-way down the shank. Whoever had carried it out, the work was not recent, for the filed places were dull. Probably the awkward workmanship was contemporaneous with the writing on the slip of yellow paper.
He filled his p
