A light rain felt across the window-pane with stealthy fingers. The end of the good weather, thought Grant. A silence followed, dark and absolute. It was as if an advance guard, a scout, had spied out the land and gone away to report. There was the long, far-away sigh of the wind that had been asleep for days. Then the first blast of the fighting battalions of the rain struck the window in a wild rattle. The wind tore and raved behind them, hounding them to suicidal deeds of valour. And presently the drip, drip from the roof began a constant gentle monotone beneath the wild symphony, intimate and soothing as the tick of a clock. Grant's eyes closed to it, and before the squall had retreated, muttering into the distance, he was asleep.
But in the morning, a grey morning veiled in dispirited drizzle, the theory still looked watertight — with judicious plugging at the weak spot, and it was not until, hard on the track of the dead man's friend, he was interviewing the manager of the Adelphi branch of the Westminster Bank that he found his nicely made house of cards pattering round his ears.
The agent was a quiet, grey man whose unluminous skin had somehow taken on the appearance of a banknote. In his manner, however, he was more like a general practitioner than a financial adviser. Grant found himself momentarily expecting to feel Mr. Dawson's dry fingertips on his wrist. But Mr. Dawson this morning was a mixture of Mercury and Juggernaut. This was his report.
The five notes in which the inspector was interested had all of them been paid over the counter on the 3rd of the month as part of a payment of two hundred and twenty-three pounds ten shillings. The money had been drawn by a client of theirs who had a running account in the bank. His name was Albert Sorrell, and he ran a small bookmaker's business in Minley Street. The sum drawn represented the whole of the money deposited with them except a pound, which had been left presumably with the intention of keeping the account open.
Good! thought Grant; the friend is a bookmaker too.
Had Mr. Dawson known Mr. Sorrell by sight? he asked.
No, not very well, but his cashier would be able to tell the inspector all about him; and he summoned the cashier. "This is Inspector Grant from Scotland Yard. He wants a description of Mr. Albert Sorrell, and I have told him that you will provide him with one."
The cashier provided a very telling one. With a minuteness that defeated any hope of a mistake, he described the dead man.
When he had finished, Grant sat thinking at top speed. What did it mean? Had the dead man owed the money to the friend, and had the friend taken all he possessed and afterwards been seized with a too tardy charity? Was that how the notes had come into the friend's possession? On the 3rd, too. That was ten days before the murder.
Did Sorrell draw the money himself? he asked.