Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard MEGAPACK®. Josephine Tey
to it. He knew it as most of the Yard know the purlieus of Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square. If the outwardly respectable but sly faces of the houses said anything to him, it was “Oh, here again, are you?” At 32 a painted wooden notice announced that on the first floor were the offices of Albert Sorrell, Turf Accountant, and Grant turned in at the doorway and climbed the dim stairs smelling of the charwoman’s Monday-morning ministrations. The stairs came to a pause at a wide landing, and Grant knocked at the door which had Sorrell’s name on it. As he expected, there was no answer. He tried the door, and found it locked. He was about to turn away, when there was a stealthy sound from inside. Grant knocked again loudly. In the subsequent pause he could hear the loud hum of the distant traffic and the footsteps of the people below on the street, but no sound came from inside the room. Grant bent to the keyhole. There was no key in it, but the view he obtained was not extensive—the corner of a desk and the top of a coal-scuttle. The room he was looking into was the back one of the two which had evidently constituted Sorrell’s offices. Grant stayed where he was for a little, motionless and expectant, but nothing living crossed the small still-life picture that the keyhole framed. He rose to go away, but, before he had taken the first step, again there was that stealthy sound. As Grant cocked his head the better to listen, he became aware that over the banister of the floor above hung an inverted human head, grotesque and horrible, its hair spread round it by the force of gravity into a Struwwelpeter effect.
Finding itself observed, the head said mildly, “Are you looking for some one?”
“The evidence points that way, doesn’t it?” said Grant nastily. “I’m looking for the man who has these offices.”
“Oh?” said the head, as if this were an entirely new idea. It disappeared, and a moment later appeared right way up in its proper place as part of a young man in a dirty painter’s smock, who came down the last flight to the landing, smelling of turpentine and smoothing down his mop of hair with paint-covered fingers.
“I don’t think that man’s been here for quite a while now,” he said. “I have the two floors above—my rooms and my studio—and I used to pass him on the stairs and hear his—his—I don’t know what you call them. He was a bookie, you know.”
“Clients?” suggested Grant.
“Yes. Hear what I presume were his clients coming sometimes. But I’m sure it’s more than a fortnight since I saw or heard him.”
“Did he go to the course, do you know?” Grant asked.
“Where’s that?” asked the artist.
“I mean, did he go to the races every day?”
The artist did not know.
“Well, I want to get into his offices. Where can I get a key?”
The artist presumed that Sorrell had the key. The agent for the property had an office off Bedford Square. He could never remember the name of the street or the number, but he could find his way there. He had lost the key of his own room or he would have offered it for a trial on Sorrell’s door.
“And what do you do when you go out?” asked Grant, curiosity for a moment overcoming his desire to get behind the locked door.
“I just leave it unlocked,” said this happy wight. “If any one finds anything in my rooms worth stealing, they’re cleverer than I am.”
And then suddenly, apparently within a yard of them and just inside the locked door, that stealthy sound that was hardly sound—merely a heard movement.
The artist’s eyebrows disappeared into the Struwwelpeter hair. He jerked his head at the door and looked interrogatively at the inspector. Without a word Grant took him by the arm and drew him down the stairs to the first turn. “Look here,” he said, “I’m a plain-clothes man—know what that is?” for the artist’s innocence as to courses had shaken any faith he might have had in his worldly knowledge. The artist said, “Yes, a bobby,” and Grant let him away with it. “I want to get into that room. Is there a yard at the back where I can see the window of the room?”
There was, and the artist led him to the ground floor and through a dark passage to the back of the house, where they came out into a little bricked yard that might have been part of a village inn. A low outhouse with a lead roof was built against the wall, and directly above it was the window of Sorrell’s office. It was open a little at the top and had an inhabited air.
“Give me a leg up,” said Grant, and was hoisted on to the roof of the outhouse. As he drew his foot from the painty clasp of his assistant, he said, “I might tell you that you are conniving at a felony. This is housebreaking and entirely illegal.”
“It is the happiest moment of my life,” the artist said. “I have always wanted to break the law, but a way has never been vouchsafed me. And now to do it in the company of a policeman is joy that I did not anticipate my life would ever provide.”
But Grant was not listening to him. His eyes were on the window. Slowly he drew himself up until his head was just below the level of the window-sill. Cautiously he peered over. Nothing moved in the room. A movement behind him startled him. He looked round to see the artist joining him on the roof. “Have you a weapon,” he whispered, “or shall I get you a poker or something?” Grant shook his head, and with a sudden determined movement flung up the lower half of the window and stepped into the room. Not a sound followed but his own quick breathing. The wan, grey light lay on the thick dust of a deserted office. But the door facing him, which led into the front room, was ajar. With an abrupt three steps he had reached and thrown it open. And as he did so, out of the second room with a wail of terror sprang a large black cat. It cleared the rear room at a bound and was through the open window before the inspector recognized it for what it was. There was an agonized yell from the artist, a clatter and a crash. Grant went to the window, to hear queer choked moans coming from the yard below. He slid hastily to the edge of the outhouse and beheld his companion in crime sitting on the grimy bricks, holding his evidently painful head, while his body was convulsed in the throes of a still more painful laughter. Reassured, Grant went back to the room for a glance at the drawers of Sorrell’s desk. They were all empty—methodically and carefully cleared. The front room had been used as another office, not a living-room. Sorrell must have lived elsewhere. Grant closed the window and, sliding down the lead roof, dropped into the yard. The artist was still sobbing, but had got the length of wiping his eyes.
“Are you hurt?” Grant asked.
“Only my ribs,” said Struwwelpeter. “The abnormal excitation of the intercostal muscles has nearly broken them.” He struggled to his feet.
“Well, that’s twenty minutes wasted,” said Grant, “but I had to satisfy myself.” He followed the hobbling artist through the dark passage again.
“No time is wasted that earns such a wealth of gratitude as I feel for you,” said Struwwelpeter. “I was in the depths when you arrived. I can never paint on Monday mornings. There should be no such thing. Monday mornings should be burnt out of the calendar with prussic acid. And you have made a Monday morning actually memorable! It is a great achievement. Sometime when you are not too busy breaking the law, come back, and I’ll paint your portrait. You have a charming head.”
A thought occurred to Grant. “I suppose you couldn’t draw Sorrell from memory?”
Struwwelpeter considered. “I think I could,” he said. “Come up a minute.” He led Grant into the welter of canvases, paints, lengths of stuff, and properties of all kinds which he called his studio. Except for the dust it looked as though a flood had passed and left the contents of the room in the haphazard relationships and curious angles that only receding water can achieve. After some flinging about of things that might be expected to be concealing something, the artist produced a bottle of Indian ink, and after another search a fine brush. He made six or seven strokes with the brush on a blank sheet of a sketching block, considered it critically, and having torn it from the block handed it over to Grant.
“It isn’t quite correct, but it’s good enough for an impression,” he said.
Grant