The Man in the Queue Read Online Free PDF

and he had nothing to put before the coroner. Had not even a scent to follow.
    His thoughts went back over yesterday. In the morning, the dead man being still unidentified, he had given Williams the man's tie, that being the newest and most individual thing about him, and had sent him out to scour London. The tie, like the rest of the man's clothes, had been obtained from a branch of a multiple business, and it was a small hope that any shop assistant would remember the individual to whom he sold the tie. Even if he did, there was no guarantee that the man remembered was their man. Faith Brothers must have sold several dozens of ties of the same pattern in London alone. But there was always that last odd chance, and Grant had seen too much of the queer unexpectedness of chance to neglect any avenue of exploration. As Williams was leaving the room an idea had occurred to him. There was that first idea of his that the man had been a salesman in some clothing business. Perhaps he did not buy his things over the counter. He might have been in the employ of Faith Brothers. "Find out," he had said to Williams, "if any one answering the dead man's description has been employed by any one of the branches lately. If you see or hear anything interesting at all—whether you think it is important or not—let me know."
    Left alone, he had examined the morning's press. He had not bothered with the various accounts of the queue murder, but the rest of the news he scrutinized with some care, beginning with the personal column. Nothing, however, sounded an answering chord in his brain. A photograph of himself with the caption, "Inspector Grant, who is in charge of the Queue Murder investigations," caused him to frown. "Fools!" he said aloud. He had then collected and studied a list of missing persons sent in from all the police stations in Britain. Five young men were missing from various places, and the description of one, who was missing from a small Durham town, might have been that of the dead man. After a long delay, Grant had succeeded in talking on the telephone to the Durham police, only to learn that the missing man had originally been a miner and was, in the Opinion of the Durham inspector, a tough. And neither "miner" nor "tough" could be applied to the dead man.
    The rest of the morning had been occupied with routine work—settling about the inquest and such necessary formalities. About lunch-time Williams had rung him up from the biggest branch of Faith Brothers, in the Strand. He had had a busy but unproductive morning. Not only did no one recall such a purchaser, but no one remembered even selling such a tie. It was not one of a range that they had stocked lately. That had made him want further information about the tie itself, and he had come to the headquarters and asked to see the manager, to whom he explained the situation. The manager now suggested that if the inspector would surrender the tie for a little it should be sent to their factory at Northwood, where a list could be furnished of the destination of all consignments of such ties within, say, the last year. Williams now sought permission to hand over the tie to the manager.
    Grant had approved his action, and while mentally commending Williams' common sense—lots of sergeants would have gone on plodding round London because they were told to and it was their duty—thought not too hopefully of the hundred or so branches of Faith Brothers all over Scotland and England. The chances narrowed slightly, however, when Williams appeared with a fuller explanation. Ties like that, it appeared, were made up in boxes of six, each tie in the box being of a different shade though usually in the same colour scheme. It was unlikely that more than one, or at the most two, ties of the exact shade of their specimen had been sent to any one branch. There was therefore more hope of a salesman remembering the customer who had bought it than there would have been if the tie had been