On the way up to town Murray talked amiably of the things he was interested in: bookmakers and their clannishness. "They're like Highlanders," he said. "They may squabble among themselves, but if an outsider butts into the scrap, it's a case of tartan against all." Horses and their foibles; trainers and their morals; Lacey and his wit. Presently he said, "How's the queue affair getting along?"
Very well, Grant said. They would make an arrest in a day or two if things continued to go as well as they were doing.
Murray was silent for a little. "I say, you don't want Sorrell in connexion with that, do you?" he asked diffidently.
Murray had been extraordinarily decent. "No," said Grant. "It was Sorrell who was found dead in the queue."
"Great heavens!" said Murray, and digested the news in silence for some time. "Well, I'm sorry," he said at last. "I never knew the fellow, but every one seems to have liked him."
And that was what Grant had been thinking too. Bert Sorrell, it seemed, had been no villain. Grant longed more than ever to meet the Levantine.
8 — Mrs. Everett
Brightling Crescent was a terrace of red-brick three-story houses of the Nottingham lace and pot-plant type of decoration. Their stone steps were coaxed into cleanliness and hideousness by liberal applications of coloured pipeclay. Some blushed at finding themselves so conspicuous, some were evidently jaundiced by the unwelcome attention, and some stared in pallid horror as at an outrage. But all of them wore that Nemo me impune lacessit air. You might pull the bright brass bell-handles — indeed, their high polish winked an urgent invitation to do so — but you passed the threshold only at the cost of a wide-stepping avoidance of these constantly refurbished traps of pipeclayed step. Grant walked up the street that Sorrell had trodden so often, and wondered if the Levantine knew it too. Mrs. Everett, a bony, short-sighted woman of fifty or so, herself opened the door of 98 to him, and Grant inquired for Sorrell.
Mr. Sorrell was no longer there, she said. He had left just a week ago to go to America.
So that was the tale some one had told.