The Man in the Queue

It was between seven and eight o’clock on a March evening, and all over London the bars were being drawn back from pit and gallery doors. Bang, thud, and clank. Grim sounds to preface an evening’s amusement. But no last trump could have so galvanized the weary attendants on Thespis and Terpsichore standing in patient column of four before the gates of promise. Here and there, of course, there was no column. At the Irving, five people spread themselves over the two steps and sacrificed in warmth what they gained in comfort; Greek tragedy was not popular. At the Playbox there was no one; the Playbox was exclusive, and ignored the existence of pits. At the Arena, which had a three weeks’ ballet season, there were ten persons for the gallery and a long queue for the pit. But at the Woffington both human strings tailed away apparently into infinity. Long ago a lordly official had come down the pit queue and, with a gesture of his outstretched arm that seemed to guillotine hope, had said, “All after here standing room only.” Having thus, with a mere contraction of his deltoid muscle, separated the sheep from the goats, he retired in Olympian state to the front of the theatre, where beyond the glass doors there was warmth and shelter. But no one moved away from the long line. Those who were doomed to stand for three hours more seemed indifferent to their martyrdom. They laughed and chattered, and passed each other sustaining bits of chocolate in torn silver paper. Standing room only, was it? Well, who would not stand, and be pleased to, in the last week of Didn’t You Know? Nearly two years it had run now, London’s own musical comedy, and this was its swan song.

Now a shudder ran down the line⁠—a shudder that the experienced recognized as but one thing. Stools were given up or folded into handbags, food disappeared, purses appeared. The doors were open. The lovely exciting gamble had begun. Was it to be win, place, or lose by the time they came to the wicket? Up in the front of the queue where the order was less mathematically two-and-two than down in the open, the excitement of the door-opening had for a moment or two overcome the habitual place-keeping instincts of the Englishman⁠—I say Englishman advisedly; the Scot has none of it⁠—and there had been a mild pushing and readjustment before the queue had become immobile in a wedged and short-breathing mass before the guichet, which was immediately inside the pit door. The clink and rattle of coin on brass proclaimed the continual hurried transactions which made the lucky ones free of paradise. The very sound of it made those behind strain forward unconsciously until the crowd in front protested as audibly as their crushed lungs permitted, and a policeman went down the queue to remonstrate. “Now then, now then, stand back a bit. There’s plenty of time. You won’t get in by pushing. All in good time.” Now and then the whole line tottered forward a few inches as the emancipated ones ran in twos and threes from the head of it, like beads rolling from a broken string.

There had been a matinée that afternoon at the Woffington, but he found the theatre in its usual state of shrouded desolation in front and untidy dreariness behind. The doorkeeper was on the premises, but no one was very sure where he was to be found. In the early evening his duties were many and various, it seemed. After several panting messengers had returned from the bowels of the building with reports “No, sir, there wasn’t a sign of him,” Grant himself joined in the exploration and eventually ran the man to earth in a dim passage behind the stage. When Grant had explained who he was and what he wanted, the man became voluble in his pride and eagerness. He was used to being within hailing distance of the aristocracy of the stage, but it was not every day that he had the chance of conversing on friendly terms with that much more august being an inspector from the C.I.D. He beamed, he continually altered the angle of his cap, he fingered his medal ribbons, he dried his palms on the seat of his trousers, and he quite obviously would have said that he had seen a monkey in the queue if it would have pleased the inspector. Grant groaned inwardly, but the part of himself that always stood aloof whatever he did⁠—the looker-on part of him which he had in such abundance⁠—thought appreciatively what a character the old boy was. With that providing for a hypothetical future which is second nature in a professional detective, he was taking a friendly farewell of so much devoted uselessness, when

She conceded the point. “See and have a bite before you go to bed,” she said, indicating 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.

Grant motioned him to a chair, and the youth, with a completely un-English grace, subsided sideways on to it, still clutching his hat, and began to talk.

“I saw you tonight at Laurent’s. I am in the pantry there. I clean the silver and things like that. They told me who you were, and after I think for a while, I decided to tell you all about it.”

It was a dining-room, and there were three people having tea at the table: an elderly woman with a faint resemblance to Mrs. Everett, a girl with reddish hair and a pale skin, and the Levantine. Grant had time to note them all from behind the minister’s bulk before his host’s making way for him brought him into their view, and he had the exquisite pleasure of seeing his quarry recognize him. For a second Lamont’s eyes widened at him, then the blood rushed to his face and as suddenly receded, leaving it deathly pale. The looker-on in Grant thought how Danny Miller would have sneered at such an exhibition⁠—Danny, who would kill a man and not bother to remember it. The Levantine was certainly an amateur at the game⁠—a murderer by accident more than design, perhaps.

“I have brought you a visitor,” the minister was saying. “This is Mr. Grant. I found him fishing, but catching nothing, so I brought him in to get some hot tea. My sister, Mrs. Dinmont. My niece, Miss Dinmont. And a friend of ours, Mr. Lowe. Now, where will you sit?”

Grant was given a seat beside Miss Dinmont and facing Lamont. Lamont had bowed to him when introduced, but so far gave no sign of ill-meditated action. Either he was paralysed or he was going to take things quietly. And then as he sat down Grant saw the thing that made his heart leap. Lamont’s cup was on the wrong side of his plate. The man was left-handed.