The Man in the Queue Read Online Free PDF Page B

merely one of a box all the same shade. The detective part of Grant listened appreciatively while the looker-on part of him smiled over the sergeant's fluency in the jargon of the trade. Half an hour with the manager of Faith Brothers had had the effect of studding the sergeant's habitual simplicity of word and phrase with amazing jewels of technicality. He talked glibly of "lines" and "repeats" and similar profundities, so that Grant had, through his bulk, in a queer television a vivid picture of the manager himself. But he was grateful to Williams and said so. That was part of Grant's charm; he never forgot to say when he was pleased.
    In the afternoon, having given up hope of learning anything more by it, he had sent the dagger to the laboratory for analysis. "Tell me anything you can about it," he had said; and last night when he left he was still waiting for the answer. Now he stretched out an arm into the chilly air and grabbed at the telephone. When he got the number he had asked for, he said:
    "Inspector Grant speaking. Any developments?"
    No, there were no developments. Two people had viewed the body last night—two separate people—but neither had recognized it. Yes, their names and addresses had been taken and were lying on his desk now. There was also a report from the laboratory.
    "Good!" said Grant, jammed the earpiece on the hook and sprang out of bed, his sense of foreboding dispelled by the clear light of reason. Over his cold bath he whistled, and all the time he was dressing he whistled, so that his landlady said to her husband, who was departing to catch an eight o'clock bus, "I'm thinking it won't be very long now before that horrible anarchist is caught." "Anarchist" and "assassin" were synonymous terms to Mrs. Field. Grant himself would not have put it so optimistically perhaps, but the thought of that sealed package waiting on his desk was to him what a lucky packet is to a small boy. It might be something of no importance and it might be a diamond. He caught Mrs. Field's benevolent glance on him as she set down his breakfast, and it was like a small boy that he said to her, "This my lucky day, do you think?"
    "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 scanning the newspapers while he chewed.
    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 penniless or both—the dregs of a city's being, cast off long before their deaths by their relations and friends, and so, when the end came, beyond the ken of any one who might have told their story. In all Grant's experience no one of the type of the dead man—a man who must have had the normal circle of acquaintances if not more—had remained unidentified. Even if he had been a provincial or a foreigner—and Grant did not think he was; the man's whole appearance had proclaimed the Londoner—he must have had a dwelling in London or near it; hotel, lodgings, or club, from which he must now be known to be missing. And the appeals from the Press that the fact of a missing person should be communicated to Scotland Yard without delay would most certainly have brought some one hurrying to report it.
    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