Grant loved his work even when he swore and called it a dog’s life, and the legacy had been used only to smooth and embroider life until what would have been the bleak places were eliminated, and to make some bleak places in other lives less impossible. There was a little grocer’s shop in a southern suburb, bright as a jewel with its motley goods, which owed its existence to the legacy and to Grant’s chance meeting with a ticket-of-leave man on his first morning out. It was Grant who had been the means of “putting him away,” and it was Grant who provided the means of his rehabilitation. It was owing entirely to the legacy, therefore, that Grant was an habitué of so exclusive an eating-place as Laurent’s, and—a much more astonishing and impressive face—a pet of the head waiter’s. Only five persons in Europe are pets of Laurent’s head waiter, and Grant was thoroughly conscious of the honour, and thoroughly sensible of the reason.
Marcel met them halfway down the green-and-gold room, with his face screwed to an expression of the most excruciating sorrow. He was desolated, but there was not a table worthy of Monsieur left. There were no tables at all except that much-to-be-condemned one in that corner. Monsieur had not let him know that he was to be expected. He was desolated, desolated simply.
Grant took the table without a murmur. He was hungry, and he did not care where he ate so that the food was good, and except for the fact that the table was directly outside the service door there was no fault to be found with it. A couple of green draught-screens camouflaged the door, and the door, being a swing one, kept the rattle of crockery to a faint castanet music that blossomed every now and then in a sudden fortissimo as the door swung wide and closed again. Over their dinner Grant decided that in the morning Williams should visit the banks in the area indicated by the letter’s postmark, and with that as a basis, track down the history of the bank-notes. It shouldn’t be difficult; banks were always accommodating. From that they turned to the discussion of the crime itself. It was Williams’ opinion that it was a gang affair; that the dead man had fallen foul of his gang, had known his danger, had borrowed the gun from the only friendly member of the crowd, and had never had a chance to use it. The money that had arrived tonight had come from the secretly friendly one. It was a good enough theory, but it left out things.
“Why had he no identification marks on him, then?”
“Perhaps,” said Williams with electrifying logic, “it’s a gang habit. No identification if they’re caught.”
That was a possible theory, and Grant was silent for a little, thinking it over. It was with the entrée that he became conscious, with that sixth sense which four years on the western front and many more in the C.I.D. had developed to an abnormal acuteness, that he was being watched. Restraining the impulse to turn round—he was sitting with his back to the room, almost facing the service door—he glanced casually into the mirror. But no one seemed to be taking the slightest interest in him. Grant continued to eat, and in a moment or two tried again. The room had emptied considerably since their arrival, and it was easy to examine the various people in the vicinity. But the mirror showed only a collection of self-absorbed people, eating, drinking, and smoking. And still Grant had that sense of being subjected to a long scrutiny. It made his flesh creep, that steady, unseen examination. He lifted his eyes above Williams’ head to the screen that hid the door. And there, in the chink between the screens, were the eyes that watched him. As if conscious of his discovery, the eyes wavered and disappeared, and Grant went serenely on with his meal. A too curious waiter, he thought. Probably knows who I am, and just wanted to gape at any one connected with a murder. Grant had suffered much from the gapers. But presently, looking up in the middle of a sentence, he found the eyes back at their examination of him. This was too much. He stared stolidly in return. But the owner of the eyes was evidently unaware that he was visible at all to Grant, and continued his watching uninterrupted. Now and then as a waiter came or went behind the screen the eyes disappeared, but always they returned to their furtive gazing. Grant was seized with a desire to see this man whose interest in himself was of so absorbing a character. He said to Williams, who was seated not more than a yard in front of the screen, “There is some one at the back of the screen behind you who is taking a most abnormal interest in us. When I click my fingers fling back your right and knock the screen sideways. Make it look as much like an accident as you can.”
Grant waited until the waiter traffic had lulled for a little and the eyes were steady at gaze, and then gently snapped his middle finger and thumb. Williams’ brawny arm shot out, the screen quivered for a moment and collapsed sideways. But there was no one there. Only the agitated swinging of the door showed where some one had made his hasty exit.
Well, that’s that, thought Grant, as Williams was apologizing for the accident with the screen. You can’t identify a pair of eyes. He finished his dinner without further annoyance and strolled back to the Yard with Williams, hoping that the photographs of the prints on the envelope would be ready for his examination.
No photographs had come, but there was a report on the tie which had been sent to Faith Brothers’ factory at Northwood. The only consignment of that pattern of tie sent out in the last year was a box of six in various shades which had been sent as a repeat order at the request of their Nottingham branch. They returned the tie and hoped that if they could be of any further use the inspector would command them.
“If nothing important turns up between now and tomorrow,” said Grant, “I shall go down to Nottingham while you are doing the banks.”
And then a man came in with photographs of the envelope prints, and Grant took from his desk the photographs of the other prints in the case—the prints of the dead man’s fingertips and the prints found on the revolver. Nothing but smudges, the report said, had been found on any of the bank-notes, so Grant and the sergeant applied themselves to the examination of the envelope prints. A variety of impressions were apparent since several people had handled the envelope since the writer had posted the letter. But clear and perfect and without possibility of doubt was the print of a forefinger to the right of the flap, and the forefinger was the same forefinger that had left its mark on the revolver found in the dead man’s pocket.
“Well, that fits your theory about the friend who supplied the gun, doesn’t it?” said Grant.
But the sergeant made a queer choked noise and continued to look at the print.
“What’s the matter? It’s as clear as a kid’s alphabet.”
The sergeant straightened himself and looked queerly at his superior. “I’ll swear I hadn’t a glass too much, sir. But it’s either that or the whole fingerprint system is balmy. Look at that!” He pointed with a not too steady forefinger at a print in the extreme lower right-hand corner, and as he did so he shoved the dead man’s fingerprints, which had lain slightly apart, under Grant’s nose. For a little there was silence while the inspector compared the prints and the sergeant, over his shoulder, half-fearfully corroborated his previous view. But there was no getting away from the fact that faced them in irrefutable whorls and ridges. The fingerprint was that of the dead man.
It was only a moment or two before Grant realized the simple significance of that apparently staggering fact.
“Communal notepaper, of course,” he said offhandedly, while his looker-on half mocked at him for having allowed himself to be victimized even for a moment by the childish amazement that had overcome him. “Your theory blossoms, Williams. The man who lent the gun and provided the money lived with the dead man. That being so, of course he can spin any kind of yarn he likes to his landlady or his wife or whoever would be interested about the disappearance of his chum.” He took up the telephone on his desk. “We’ll see what the handwriting people have to say about the piece of notepaper.”
But the handwriting experts had nothing to add to what Grant already knew or guessed. The paper was of a common type that could be bought at any stationer’s or bookstall. The printing was that of a man. Given a specimen
