At your service." He gave her a little bow.

"I don't need anything just now, but I might some day." She considered him. Grant found himself hoping with a fervor which surprised him that he was not being placed in the same category as "washy chestnuts."

"You're much more my type. I like people broad across the cheekbones. Good-bye, Mr. Grant."

"Who was that?" Tisdall asked, in the indifferent tones of the newly conscious. "Colonel Burgoyne's daughter."

"She was right about my shirt."

"One of the reach-me-downs?"

"Yes. Am I being arrested?"

"Oh, no. Nothing like that."

"It mightn't be a bad idea."

"Oh? Why?"

"It would settle my immediate future. I left the cottage this morning and now I'm on the road."

"You mean you're serious about tramping?"

"As soon as I have got suitable clothes."

"I'd rather you stayed where I could get information from you if I wanted."

"I see the point. But how?"

"What about that architect's office? Why not try for a job?"

"I'm never going back to an office. Not an architect's anyhow. I was shoved there only because I could draw."

"Do I understand that you consider yourself permanently incapacitated from earning your bread?"

"Phew! That's nasty. No, of course not. I'll have to work. But what kind of job am I fit for?"

"Two years of hitting the high spots must have educated you to something. Even if it is only driving a car."

There came a tentative tap at the door, and the sergeant put his head in.

"I'm very sorry indeed to disturb you, Inspector, but I'd like something from the Chief's files. It's rather urgent."

Permission given, he came in.

"This coast's lively in the season, sir," he said, as he ran through the files. "Positively continental. Here's the chef at the Marine — it's just outside the town, so it's our affair — the chef at the Marine's stabbed a waiter because he had dandruff, it seems. The waiter, I mean, sir. Chef on the way to prison and waiter on the way to hospital. They think maybe his lung's touched. Well, thank you, sir. Sorry to disturb you."

Grant eyed Tisdall, who was achieving the knot in his tie with a melancholy abstraction. Tisdall caught the look, appeared puzzled by it, and then, comprehension dawning, leaped into action.

"I say, Sergeant, have they a fellow to take the waiter's place, do you know?"

"That they haven't. Mr. Toselli — he's the manager — he's tearing his hair."

"Have you finished with me?" he asked Grant.

"For today," Grant said. "Good luck."

Chapter 5

"No. No arrest," said Grant to Superintendent Barker over the telephone in the early evening. "But I don't think there's any doubt about its being murder.