CHAPTER NINETEENChief Detective Inspector Lamb sat solidly in Jimmy Latter’s heavy oak writing-chair, which he filled a good deal better than Jimmy did. On the table in front of him was a pile of papers. He had left his bowler hat in the hall and appeared, in his neat dark clothes, as a stout, strongly built figure, very upright and as solid as the oak which supported him. His strong black hair had receded a little at the temples, leaving the large square face rather more in evidence than it had been twenty years before. His round brown eyes, which Frank Abbott irreverently compared to peppermint bull’s-eyes—the dark, strongly flavoured kind—were turned upon that young man, who in a beautiful suit of summer grey sat in an easy attitude on the farther side of the table. There could have bee
