Страница 7 из 53
"I don't know about luck, Mr. Grant. I don't know as I believes in it. But I do believe in Providence. And I don't think Providence'll let a nice young man like that be stabbed to death and not bring the guilty to justice. Trust in the Lord, Mr. Grant."
"And if the clues are very thin, the Lord and the C.I.D.," Grant misquoted at her and attacked his bacon and eggs. She lingered a moment watching him, shook her head in a gently misgiving way at him, and left him sca
On the way up to town he occupied himself by considering the problem of the man's non-identification, which became momentarily more surprising. True, a few persons every year are thrown up by London to lie unclaimed for a day or two and then vanish into paupers' graves. But they are all either old or pe
Then, granted that the man was a Londoner — as Grant most heartily believed — why did his people or his landlord not come forward? Obviously, either because they had reason to think the dead man a bad lot, or because they themselves had no wish to attract the attention of the police. A gang? A gang getting rid of an unwanted member? But gangs didn't wait until they got their victim into a queue before dispensing with his services. They chose safer methods.
Unless — yes, it might have been at once a retribution and a warning. It had had all the elements of a gesture — the weapon, the striking down of the victim while in a place of supposed safety, the whole bravado of the thing. It eliminated the backslider and intimidated the survivors at one and the same time. The more he considered it the more it seemed the reasonable explanation of a mystery. He had scouted the thought of a secret society and he still scouted it. The vengeance of a secret society would not prevent the man's friends from reporting his loss and claiming him. But the defaulting member of a gang — that was a different thing. In that case all his friends would either know or guess the ma
As Grant turned into the Yard he was revising in his mind the various London gangs that flourished at the moment. Da
Eagerly he opened it and eagerly skipped the slightly prosy unimportances with which it opened — Bretherton of the scientific side was inclined to be a pompous dogmatist; if you sent him a Persian cat to report on, he would spend the first sheet of foolscap in deciding that its coat was grey and not fawn — and picked out the salient thing. Just above the junction of the handle with the blade, Bretherton said, was a stain of blood which was not the blood on the blade. The base on which the saint stood was hollow and had been broken at one side. The break was merely a cut which did not gape and was almost invisible owing to the bloodstain. But when the surface was pressed, one edge of the rough cut was raised very slightly above the other. In gripping the tool the murderer had made the fracture in the metal gape sufficiently to injure his own hand. He would now be suffering from a jagged cut somewhere on the thumb side of the first finger of the left hand, or finger side of the thumb.
Good so far, thought Grant, but one can't sift London for a left-handed man with a cut hand and arrest him for that. He sent for Williams.
"Do you know where Da
"No, sir," said Williams; "but Barber will know. He came up from Newbury last night, and he knows all about Da
"All right, go and find out. No, better send Barber to me."
When Barber came — a tall, slow man with a sleepy and misleading smile — he repeated his question.
"Da
"Oh? Been very quiet lately, hasn't he?"
"So we thought, but I think that jewel robbery that the Gowbridge people are busy with now is Da
"I thought banks were his line."
"Yes, but he has a new 'jane. He probably wants money."
"I see. Do you know his number?"
Barber did.
An hour later, Da
Da
The plain-clothes man did not think that the inspector wanted anything but some information from him.
"Oh? And what is the inspector inspecting at the moment?"
But that the plain-clothes man either did not know or would not tell.
"All right," said Da
When a portly constable led him into Grant's presence Da
"No," said Grant, smiling, "your presence is usually a
"You're a wit, Inspector. I shouldn't have thought you'd need any one to jog your brains along. You don't think you've got anything on me, do you?"
"Not at all. I thought you might be of some use to me."
"You're certainly flattering." It was impossible to tell when Miller was serious or otherwise.
"Did you ever know by sight a man like this?" While he described in detail the murdered man, Grant's eyes were examining Da
When he came to the end of his description, particularized even to the turn-in toe, Da
"Well, I suppose you have no objections to coming with me and having a look at him?"
"Not if it'll set your mind at rest, Inspector. I'll do anything to oblige."
The inspector put his hand into his pocket and brought it out full of coins, as if to make sure of his loose change before setting out. A sixpe