More than an hour, Mrs. Field said. She didn't see him rightly. He had stood well out beyond the step. But he was young.
"No name?"
No, he refused to give a name.
"All right," said Grant. "You go to bed. If he comes back, I'll let him in."
She hesitated in the doorway. "You won't do anything rash, will you?" she said solicitously. "I don't like the thought of you bin here all alone with some one who might be an anarchist for all we know."
"Don't you worry, Mrs. Field. You won't be blown up tonight."
"It isn't blowing up I'm afraid of," she said. "It's the thought of you lyin' here perhaps bleeding to death and no one knowing. Think how I'd feel when I came in in the morning and found you like that."
Grant laughed. "Well, you can comfort yourself. There isn't the slightest chance of anything so thrilling happening. No one has ever spilt my blood except Jerry at Contalmaison, and that was more by luck than good management."
She conceded the point. "See you have a bite before you go to bed," she said, indcating the food on the sideboard. "I got you some English tomatoes, and the beef is Tomkins' best pickled." She said good night and went, but she could not have reached her kitchen before a knock sounded on the door. Grant heard her go to the door, and even while his brain was speculating about his visitor, the looker-on in him was wondering whether it was spunk or curiosity that had sent Mrs. Field so willingly to answer the knock. A moment later she threw open the sitting-room door and said, "A young gentleman to see you, sir," and into Grant's eager presence came a youth of nineteen or twenty, fairly tall, dark, broad-shouldered, but slight, and poised on his feet like a boxer. As he came forward he shot a furtive glance from his brilliant dark eyes into the corner behind the door, and he came to a halt some yards from the inspector in the middle of the room, turning a soft felt hat in his slim gloved hands.
"You are Inspector Grant?" he asked.