The Man in the Brown Suit Read Online Free PDF Page B

frightened. What frightened him? It wasn’t me. But someone might have been walking up the platform towards us—someone he recognized.”
    â€œYou didn’t see anyone?”
    â€œNo,” I admitted. “I didn’t turn my head. Then, as soon as the body was recovered from the line, a man pushed forward to examine it, saying he was a doctor.”
    â€œNothing unusual in that,” said the inspector dryly.
    â€œBut he wasn’t a doctor.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHe wasn’t a doctor,” I repeated.
    â€œHow do you know that, Miss Beddingfeld?”
    â€œIt’s difficult to say, exactly. I’ve worked in hospitals during the war, and I’ve seen doctors handle bodies. There’s a sort of deft professional callousness that this man hadn’t got. Besides, a doctor doesn’t usually feel for the heart on the right side of the body.”
    â€œHe did that?”
    â€œYes, I didn’t notice it specially at the time—except that I felt there was something wrong. But I worked it out when I got home, and then I saw why the whole thing had looked so unhandy to me at the time.”
    â€œH’m,” said the inspector. He was reaching slowly for pen and paper.
    â€œIn running his hands over the upper part of the man’s body he would have ample opportunity to take anything he wanted from the pockets.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound likely to me,” said the inspector. “But—well, can you describe him at all?”
    â€œHe was tall and broad-shouldered, wore a dark overcoat and black boots, a bowler hat. He had a dark-pointed beard and gold-rimmed eyeglasses.”
    â€œTake away the overcoat, the beard and the eyeglasses, and there wouldn’t be much to know him by,” grumbled the inspector. “He could alter his appearance easily enough in five minutes if he wanted to—which he would do if he’s the swell pickpocket you suggest.”
    I had not intended to suggest anything of the kind. But from this moment I gave the inspector up as hopeless.
    â€œNothing more you can tell us about him?” he demanded, as I rose to depart.
    â€œYes,” I said. I seized my opportunity to fire a parting shot. “His head was markedly brachycephalic. He will not find it so easy to alter that.”
    I observed with pleasure that Inspector Meadows’s pen wavered. It was clear that he did not know how to spell brachycephalic.

Five
    I n the first heat of indignation, I found my next step unexpectedly easy to tackle. I had had a half-formed plan in my head when I went to Scotland Yard. One to be carried out if my interview there was unsatisfactory (it had been profoundly unsatisfactory). That is, if I had the nerve to go through with it.
    Things that one would shrink from attempting normally are easily tackled in a flush of anger. Without giving myself time to reflect, I walked straight to the house of Lord Nasby.
    Lord Nasby was the millionaire owner of the Daily Budget . He owned other papers—several of them, but the Daily Budget was his special child. It was as the owner of the Daily Budget that he was known to every householder in the United Kingdom. Owing to the fact that an itinerary of the great man’s daily proceedings had just been published, I knew exactly where to find him at this moment. It was his hour for dictating to his secretary in his own house.
    I did not, of course, suppose that any young woman who chose to come and ask for him would be at once admitted to the august presence. But I had attended to that side of the matter. In the card tray in the hall of the Flemmings’ house, I had observed the card of the Marquis of Loamsley, England’s most famous sporting peer. I had removed the card, cleaned it carefully with bread crumbs, and pencilled upon it the words: “Please give Miss Beddingfeld a few moments of your time.” Adventuresses must not be too scrupulous in their