Free The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey Page A

restored his good humour a little. They were a wonder and a revelation, these lights. It was incredible that anything so faery had its invisible support in stout standards and cross bars, and its being in a dynamo. But he was glad when the long roar and rattle over the points proclaimed the end of the journey, and the more robust lights of London hung above him.
    As he turned into the Yard he had a queer feeling that the thing he had set out to find was waiting for him here. His hunch had not played him false. That scrap of information that would be the key to the whole of the dead man's story was about to be put into his hand. His steps quickened unconsciously. He could hardly wait. Never had lifts seemed so slow or passages so long.
    * * *
    And after all there was nothing—nothing but the written report which Williams, who had gone to tea, had left for him when he should come in—a more detailed recapitulation of what he had already heard over the telephone.
    But at the exact moment that Inspector Grant had turned into the Yard a queer thing had happened to Danny Miller. He had been seated sideways in an easy-chair in an upper room of the house in Pimlico, his neat feet in their exquisite shoes dangling idly from the upholstered arm, and a cigarette in a six-inch holder projecting at an aggressive angle from his thin mouth. Standing in the middle of the floor was his "jape." She was engaged in trying on a series of evening frocks, which she wrested from their cardboard shells as one thumbs peas from a pod. Slowly she turned her beautiful body so that the light caught the beaded surface of the fragile stuff and accentuated the long lines of her figure.
    "That's a nice one, isn't it?" she said, her eyes seeking Danny's in the mirror. But even as she looked she saw the eyes, focused on the middle of her back, widen to a wild stare. She swung round. "What's the matter?" she asked. But Danny apparently did not hear her; the focus of his eyes did not alter. Suddenly he snatched the cigarette-holder from his mouth, pitched the cigarette into the fireplace, and sprang to his feet with wild gropings about him.
    "My hat!" he said. "Where's my hat? Where the hell's my hat!"
    "It's on the chair behind you," she said, amazed. "What's biting you?"
    Danny snatched the hat and fled out of the room as if all the fiends in the lower regions were on his heels. She heard him pitch himself down the stairs, and then the front door closed with a bang. She was still standing with startled eyes on the door when she heard him coming back. Up the stairs he came, three at a time, as lightly as a cat, and burst into her presence.
    "Gimme tuppence," he said. "I haven't got tuppence."
    Mechanically she reached out for the very expensive and rather beautiful handbag that had been one of his presents to her, and produced two pennies. "I didn't know you were that broke," she said in an effort to goad him into explanation. "What do you want them for?"
    "You go to blazes!" he snapped, and disappeared again.
    He arrived at the nearest call-box slightly breathless but exceedingly pleased with himself, and without condescending to anything so mundane as a consultation with the telephone directory, demanded to be connected with Scotland Yard. During the subsequent delay he executed a neat shuffle on the floor of the call-box as a means of expressing at once his impatience and his triumph. At last—there was Grant's voice at the end of the wire.
    "I say, Inspector, this is Miller speaking. I've just remembered where I saw that guy you were talking about. 'Member?...Well, I travelled in a race train to Leicester with him, end of January, I think it was...Sure? I remember as if it was yesterday. We talked racing, and he seemed to know quite a lot about it. But I never saw him before or since...Eh?...No, I didn't see any bookmaking things...Don't mention it. I'm pleased to be able to help. I told you my brain didn't go back on me for long!"
    Danny quitted the box