Grant asked if there was anything on in the town on that date that would bring a stranger to Nottingham, and the youth said yes, most emphatically. There had been a huge musical festival a festival for all the Midlands; and there had been a good few people from London too. He knew, because he himself had taken part in it. He sang in a church choir and knew all about festivals. The stranger had looked much more like some one interested in the festival than like a commercial traveller. He had thought at the time that that was probably what the man was in Nottingham for.
Grant thought it was quite likely. He remembered the man's sensitive hands. And he had been an habitué of the Woffington — which, if not highbrow, is at least invariably musical. It didn't march with the gang theory, but he could not afford to ignore it because of that. The gang theory had no support in fact. It was a theory and nothing else — pure speculation. He thanked the youth and asked for the name of some one in Nottingham who would know all about the festival and the people who came to it. The youth said that he had better go and see Yeudall, the solicitor. Yeudall wasn't the secretary; but he was a sort of chairman, and it was his hobby. He sat there from morning to night, all the three days of the festival, and he would be certain to know any one who was interested enough to come from London for it.
Grant wrote down Yeudall's address, conscious that the youth's inquisitive mind was docketing him as it had docketed the dead man, and that years hence, if some one asked him to describe the man who took Yeudall's address, he would do it faithfully. He was wasted in a hatter's-and-hosier's.
"Are you looking for the man who bought the tie?" the youth asked. He said «looking» in inverted commas, giving it its police sense.
"Not exactly," said Grant, "but I want to trace him if I can." And he departed to interview Mr. Yeudall.
In a little side street, near the castle — the kind of street that has never seen a tramcar and where one's footsteps echo until one involuntarily looks behind — were situated the small and gloomy offices of Yeudall, Lister & Yeudall. Three hundred years old they were, and the waiting-room was panelled in oak that extinguished the last valiant ray of light as it fought its way past the old greenish glass of the window-pane. The light died on the window-sill as the last survivor of a charge dies on the enemy parapet, murdered but glorious. But Mr. Yeudall, of Yeudall, Lister & Yeudall, would have considered it heresy if it had been suggested that things might be otherwise. Otherwise! That meant a building like a meat-safe, fretted with windows until the walls were practically non-existent. A collection of plate-glass bound together by pilasters of an incredible ignobility! That was modern architecture! But, as if to make up for the dim dustiness of his surroundings, Mr. Yeudall himself beamed and shone and welcomed all humanity with that sublime lack of suspicion which makes friends, and «confidence» men, but never lawyers. Being the only Yeudall of the third generation, he had been given in his youth a cupboard-like corner in the warren of small rooms that were the Yeudall offices, and, since he loved oak panelling and beams and greenish glass second only to symphonies and sonatas, he had stayed there. And now he was Yeudall, Lister & Yeudall — though a competent clerk kept anything too awful from happening.
To say that Mr. Yeudall welcomed the inspector is an inadequate statement. Grant felt that he must have met the man before and have forgotten it. He betrayed none of the curiosity that was usually rampant on a man's face when the inspector followed his card into a room. Grant was to him merely another charming fellow-being, and almost Before he had made his business clear Grant Found himself being led away to lunch. It was so much nicer to talk over a meal, and it was long after one o'clock and if the inspector hadn't eaten since breakfast, he must be famishing. Grant followed his unexpected host meekly enough; he had not yet got his information, and this seemed to be the only way of getting it. Moreover, a detective officer never throws away the chance of making an acquaintance. If Scotland Yard has a motto it is You Never Know.
Over lunch he learned that Mr. Yeudall had never to his knowledge seen the man he was looking for. He knew by sight or personally all the performers at the festival as well as a great number of those merely interested in it. But none tallied exactly with the description Grant furnished.
"If you think he was musical, try Lyons' orchestra or the picture-houses. Their orchestra performers are mostly Londoners."
Grant did not bother to explain that the supposition that the man was musical had arisen through his supposed connexion with the festival. It was easier and pleasanter to let Mr. Yeudall talk. In the afternoon, however, after he had taken farewell of his cheerful host, he did sift the various orchestras in the town, with the lack of success that he had foreseen. He then telephoned to the Yard to find out how Williams had fared in his hunt after the history of the bank-notes, and spoke to Williams himself, who had just come back after a long morning's work. The notes were with the bank just now. Nothing had transpired so far, but they were on a scent, and the bank were working it.