police officer being admitted to her sister in her present state. The sight of the police officer in reality was so astonishing that she looked again at his card quite involuntarily, and Grant smiled inwardly a little more broadly than he permitted himself outwardly.
“I know you hate the sight of me,” he said apologetically—and the tone was not wholly acting—“but I wish you would let me talk to your sister for just two minutes. You can stand outside the door with a stopwatch. Or come in, if you like, of course. There is nothing at all private in what I want to say to her. It’s only that I am in charge of the investigations in this case, and it is my duty to see the seven people who were nearest the man last night. It will help me enormously if I can write them all off the slate tonight and start on fresh lines tomorrow. Don’t you see? It’s mere form but very helpful.”
As he had hoped, this line of argument was a success. After a little hesitation the girl said, “Let me go and see if I can persuade her.” Her report of the inspector’s charms must have been a rose-coloured one, for she came back in less time than he had dared to hope and took him up to her sister’s room, where he had an interview with a tearful woman who protested that she had not even noticed the man until he had fallen, and whose wet eyes regarded him continually with a dreadful curiosity. Her mouth was hidden behind a barricade of handkerchief which she kept pressed to it. Grant wished that she would take it down for a moment. He had a theory that mouths gave away more than eyes—certainly where women were concerned.
“Were you standing behind him when he fell?”
“Yes.”
“And who was alongside him?”
She could not remember. No one was paying attention to anything but getting into the theatre, and in any case she never noticed people on the street.
“I’m sorry,” she said shakily, when he was taking his departure. “I’d like to be of use if I could. I keep seeing that knife, and I’d do anything to have the man that did it arrested.” And as Grant went out he dismissed her from his mind.
Her husband, whom he had to travel into the City to see—he could have had them all to the Yard, but he wanted to see how they were occupying their time on this the first day after the murder—was more helpful. There had been a fair amount of churning in the queue, he said, as the doors were opened, so that their relations with their neighbours had altered a bit. As far as he could remember, the person who had stood beside the dead man and in front of himself was a man who had belonged to a party of four in front of that again, and had gone in with them. He, like his wife, said that he had not consciously seen the man until he had fallen.
The other five Grant found equally innocent and equally unhelpful. None had noticed the man. That amazed Grant just a little. How had no one seen him? He must have been there all the time. One doesn’t shove in at the head of a queue without attracting a most uncomfortable amount of attention. And even the most unobservant of people will recall what their eyes have seen even if they were unconscious of taking notice at the time. Grant was still puzzling when he got back to the Yard.
There he sent a notice to the Press which asked any one who had seen a man leave the queue to communicate with Scotland Yard. Also a full description of the dead man, and as much of the progress of the investigations as was to be given to the public. Then he summoned Williams and demanded an account of his stewardship. Williams reported that the dead man’s fingerprints had been photographed according to instructions and sent up for investigation, but he was unknown to the police. No corresponding fingerprints were to be found among those betraying dockets. The revolver expert could find nothing individual about the revolver. It was probably secondhand, had been used quite a lot, and was of course a very powerful weapon.
“Huh!” said Grant disgustedly. “Some expert!” and Williams smiled.
“Well, he did say there was nothing distinctive about it,” he reminded.
And then he explained that before sending the revolver to the experts he had tested it for fingerprints, and finding quite a lot had had them photographed. He was now waiting for the prints.
“Good man,” said Grant, and went in to see the superintendent, carrying the print of the dead man’s fingertips with him. He gave Barker a précis of the day’s events without adducing any theories about foreigners beyond remarking that it was a very un-English crime.
“Precious unproductive kind of clues we’ve got,” said Barker. “All except the dagger, and that’s more like something out of a book than part of an honest-to-goodness crime.”
“My sentiments exactly,” said Grant. “I wonder how many people will be in the Woffington queue tonight,” he added irrelevantly.
The knowledge of how Barker would have speculated on this fascinating question was lost for ever to mankind by the entrance of Williams.
“The revolver prints, sir,” he said succinctly, and laid them on the table. Grant picked them up with no great enthusiasm and compared them with the prints he had absent-mindedly been carrying about. After a short time he stiffened to sudden interest as a pointer stiffens. There were five distinct prints and many incomplete ones, but neither the good prints nor the broken ones had been made by the dead man. Attached to the prints was a report from the fingerprint department. There was no trace of these prints in their records.
Back in his room Grant sat and thought. What did it mean, and of what value was the knowledge? Did the revolver not belong to the dead man? Borrowed, perhaps? But even if it had been borrowed there would surely have been some indication that the dead man had had it in his possession. Or had the dead man not had it in his possession? Had it been slipped into his pocket by some one else? But one could not slip anything of the weight and bulk of a service revolver into a man’s pocket unknown to him. No, not a living man, but—it could have been done after the knife-thrust. But why? Why? No solution, however farfetched, presented itself to him. He took the dagger out of its wrappings, and considered it through the microscope, but could mesmerize himself into no hopeful state over it. He was stale. He would go out and walk a bit. It was just after five. He would go down to the Woffington and see the man who had been doorkeeper at the pit last night.
It was a fine still evening with a primrose sky, and London was painted against it, in flat washes of a misty lavender. Grant sniffed the air appreciatively. Spring was coming. When he had run the Levantine to earth, he would wangle some leave—sick leave, if he couldn’t get it any other way—and go fishing somewhere. Where should he go? You got the best fishing in the Highlands, but the company was apt to be darned dull. He would go fishing in the Test—at Stockbridge, perhaps. Trout were poor sport, but there was a snug little pub there, and the best of company. And he would get a horse to ride there, and turf to ride it on. And Hampshire in spring—!
So he speculated, walking briskly along the Embankment, on things far removed from the business on hand. For that was Grant’s way. Barker’s motto was: “Chew it over! Chew it over continually, sleeping and waking, and you’ll find the kernel that matters.” That was true for Barker but not for Grant. Grant had once retorted that when he had chewed to that extent he couldn’t think of anything but the ache in his jaws, and he had meant it. When something baffled him he found that if he kept on worrying it, he got no further, and lost his sense of proportion in the process. So when he came to a dead stop he indulged in what he called “shutting his eyes” for a little, and when he “opened” them again he habitually found a new light on things that revealed unexpected angles and made the old problem a totally new proposition.
There had been a matinée that afternoon at the Woffington, but he found the theatre in its usual state of shrouded desolation in front and untidy dreariness behind. The doorkeeper was on the premises,
