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"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?"
Da
"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 pe
"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 co
"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!"
Da
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 Da
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 di
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 а 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 thi
A second later the man looked back — not with that momentary, absent-minded glance that one gives, not knowing why, but with that two-second turn of the head which means a deliberate scrutiny. And a second after he had vanished up Bedford Street. And then Grant sprinted. Vividly he could see in his mind that thin figure flying up the dark and deserted street with none to say him nay. As he turned the corner and pulled up he could see no sign of his quarry. Now, not even a Burleigh could have been out of sight in the time if he had taken a straight course, so Grant, expecting a bluff, walked briskly up the right-hand side of the street, his eye wary at each recess. As nothing materialized he grew anxious; a consciousness of being fooled grew within him. He stopped and looked back, and as he did so, down at the Strand end a figure moved from a doorway on the other side of the street and fled back to the crowded thoroughfare it had left. In thirty seconds Grant had gained the Strand again, but the man was gone. Busses came and went, taxis floated by, shops were open all up and down the street. The choice of a means of escape was not wanting. Grant cursed, and even as he cursed he thought, Well, he fooled me very neatly, but I expect he's cursing harder than I am for being such a fool as to show that he knew me. That was a very bad break. And for the first time he felt pleased with the Press who had made so free with his features in their desire to educate the public. He patrolled the street for a while, casting exploratory but unoptimistic glances into the shops as he passed. Then he withdrew into the shadow of a doorway, where he remained for some time, hoping against hope that the man had gone to ground instead of making a break for it, and would reappear when he thought the coast was clear. The only result of that was that an inquisitive policeman who had watched him for some time from across the street wanted to know what he was waiting for. Grant came out into the light and explained the circumstances to the apologetic officer, and, deciding that his man had bolted, went to telephone to the Yard. His first impulse when the man had tricked him and run for it had been to throw a squad into the Strand, but the sight of the swift traffic and the knowledge that by the time any one arrived from the Embankment, even in a fast car, the wanted man might be well on the way to Golder's Green or Camberwell or Elstree, had deterred him. It was hardly an occasion for turning out the force.