The Man in the Queue

"Well, it very nearly did for me."

"Yes; I got an awful jolt when I saw you behind me so soon."

"If it's any comfort to you, I got a much worse one when I saw you arriving back in the Strand. What did you do then?"

"Took a taxi. There was one passing."

"Tell me," the inspector said, his curiosity getting the better of him, "were you pla

"No; I had no plans at all. I thought of the boat afterwards only because I'm used to boats, and I thought you'd think of them last. I was going to try to escape somehow, but I didn't think of it until I saw the pepper-pot as I was going out. It was the only way I could think of, you see. Bert had my gun."

"Your gun? Was that your gun in his pocket?"

"Yes; that's what I went to the queue for."

But Grant did not want statements of that sort tonight. "Don't talk!" he said, and rang for the boy. "I'll take any statement you want to give me tomorrow. If there's any-thing I can do for you tonight, tell the boy and he'll let me know."

"There isn't anything, thank you. You've been awfully decent — far more decent than I thought the police ever were — to criminals."

That was so obviously an English version of Raoul's gentil that Grant smiled involuntarily, and the shadow of a smile was reflected on Lamont's swarthy face. "I say," he said, "I've thought a lot about Bert, and it's my belief that, if it wasn't a mistake, it was a woman."

"Thanks for the tip," said Grant dryly, and left him to the tender mercies of the gri

14 — The Statement

It was not at Carni

Grant, who was dying to have a statement down in black and white, explained that the man himself was anxious to give one, and that giving it would surely harm him less than having it simmering in his brain.

"It would be all right at the begi

"Very," said Lamont, with an admirable smile and as the car moved away, Grant took out the handcuffs.

"Sorry," he said brusquely. "It's only till we reach the railway." But Lamont merely repeated the word "Unlucky!" as if, surprisingly, he liked the sound of it. At the station they were joined by a plainclothes man, and at Inverness had a compartment to themselves. And it was after di

"It isn't much," he said. "But I want you to know."

"You realize that what you say may he used against you?" Grant said. "Your lawyer would probably want you to say nothing. You see, it's putting your line of defence into our hands." And even while he was saying it, he was wondering: Why am I so punctilious? I've told him already that anything he says may be used against him. But Lamont wanted to talk, and so the constable produced his notebook.

"Where shall I begin?" Lamont asked. "It's difficult to know where to start."

"Suppose you tell us how you spent the day Sorrell was murdered that's a week last Tuesday — the 13th."

"Well, in the morning we packed — Bert was leaving for America that night and I took my things to my new room in Brixton and he took his to Waterloo."

Here the inspector's heart missed a beat. Fool! He'd forgotten all about the man's luggage. He had been so hot on the false scent of the Ratcliffes and then on the trail of Lamont that he hadn't had time to see the thing under his nose. Not that it was of supreme importance, in any case.

"That took us till lunchtime. We had lunch in the Coventry Street Lyons —"

"Whereabouts?"

"In a corner table on the first floor."

"Yes; go on."

"All the time we were having lunch we argued as to whether I was going to see him off or not. I wanted to go down to Southampton with him and see him sail, but he wouldn't let me come even to the boat-train at Waterloo. He said there wasn't any-thing in the world he hated like being seen off, especially when he was going a long way. I remember he said, 'If a chap's not going far, then there's no need, and if he's going to the other side of the world, then there's no good. What's a few minutes more or less? Then in the afternoon we went to the Woffington to see Didn't You Know?"

"What!" said Grant. "You went to the show at the Woffington in the afternoon?"

"Yes; that was arranged a long time be-forehand. Bert had booked seats. Stalls. It was a sort of final do — celebration. At the interval he told me that he was going to join the pit queue for the evening performance as soon as we got out — he had gone a lot to Didn't You Know? It was a sort of craze; in fact, we both went a lot — and said that we'd say goodbye then. It seemed a poor way to me to say goodbye to a pal you'd known as well as I knew Bert, but he was always a bit unaccountable, and anyhow, if he didn't want me, I wasn't going to insist on being with him. So we said goodbye outside the front of the Woffington, and I went back to Brixton to unpack my things. I was feeling awfully fed up, because Bert and I had been such pals that I hadn't any others worth mentioning, and it was lonely at Brixton after Mrs. Everett's."