He didn’t want to miss his chance to speak with Schott, but he didn’t want to stand in a tight space with a man who had thirty knives nearby, and knew how to use them.Impulsively he crossed the street and opened the door.As soon as the smell hit him he knew it had been a mistake. From twenty feet he could admire a butcher’s shop, its sanitary white, its reddish pink slabs of beef cut so tidily. Close up, though, it nauseated him. If it was browned in a red wine sauce there was nothing he preferred to a steak, but seeing it before it had reached that stage was less pleasant.The man in the green butcher’s apron had been in the back, but at the sound of the bell attached to the door he popped up to the front. To Lenox’s disappointment, it wasn’t the gentleman from the boxing club.“Mr. Schott?” he said.“Yes? What can I get you?” The butcher was a short, tough lump of a man, bald and round-headed, with a belt of fat and arms that looked powerful from the heavy work of lifting and chopping.
