Free The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey Page B

and set out, a little more soberly this time, to smooth down an outraged and abandoned female in a beaded evening frock, and Grant hung up his receiver and expelled a long breath. A race train! The thing had all the fittingness of truth. What a fool he had been! What a double-dyed infernal fool! Not to have thought of that. Not to have remembered that though Nottingham to two-thirds of Britain may mean lace, to the other third it means racing. And of course racing explained the man—his clothes, his visit to Nottingham, his predilection for musical comedy, even—perhaps—the gang.
    Fie sent out for a Racing Up-to-Date . Yes, there had been a jumping meeting at Colwick Park on the second of February. And one in Leicester at the end of January. That checked Danny's statement. Danny had provided the key.
    Information like that, Grant thought bitterly, would come on a Saturday evening when bookmakers were as if they had not been, as far as their offices were concerned. And as for tomorrow—no bookmaker was at home on a Sunday. The very thought of a whole day without travelling scattered them over the length and breadth of England in their cars as quicksilver scatters when spilt. Both bank and bookmaking investigations would be hindered by the intervention of the week-end.
    Grant left word of his whereabouts and repaired to Laurent's. On Monday there would be more hack work—a round of the offices with the tie and revolver—the revolver that no one so far had claimed to have seen. But perhaps before then the banknotes would have provided a clue that would speed things up and obviate the laborious method of elimination. Meantime he would have an early dinner and think things over.

6—The Levantine
    The green-and-gold room was half empty as he made his way to a corner, and Marcel lingered to talk. Things marched with the inspector, it seemed? Ah, but Inspector Grant was a marvel. To have built a whole man out of a little dagger! (The Press, with the exception of the early-morning editions, had blazoned the wanted man's description all over Britain.) It was a thing à faire peur . If he, Marcel, was to bring him a fish fork with the entreé, it might be made to prove that he had a corn on the left little toe.
    Grant disclaimed any such Holmesian qualities. "The usual explanation advanced for such little mistakes is that the guilty one is in love."
    " Ah, non alors! " laughed Marcel. "I defy even Inspector Grant to find me guilty of that."
    "Oh? Are you misanthrope?" asked Grant.
    No; Marcel loved his kind, but his wife was an exacting woman, Grant should know.
    "I think I made the acquaintance of a pantry boy of yours the other day," Grant said. "Legarde, was it?"
    Ah, Raoul. A good boy, very. And beautiful too, hein ? Such a profile and such eyes! They had wanted him for the cinema, but Raoul would have none of it. He was going to be maitre d'hôtel , Raoul. And if Marcel was any judge, he would be.
    A new arrival took the table opposite, and Marcel, the geniality gone from his face like snowflakes on a wet pavement, went to listen to his needs with that mixture of tolerant superciliousness and godlike abstraction which he used to all but his five favourites. Grant made a leisurely meal, but even after lingering over coffee it was still early when he found himself in the street. The Strand was brilliant as day and crowded, the ebb of the late home-goers meeting the current of the early pleasure-seekers and causing a fret that filled both footpath and roadway. Slowly he walked up the gaudy pavement towards Charing Cross, in and out of the changing light from the shop windows: rose light, gold light, diamond light; shoe shop, clothes shop, jewellers. Presently, in the wider pavement before the old "bottleneck," the crowd thinned out and men and women became individual beings instead of the corpuscles of a mob. A man who had been walking several yards in front of Grant turned round as if to see the number of an oncoming bus. His