第33章 (第2/3页)
'That's what I want. Exactly.'
'Policeman!' jibed the boy. "Where were you at five p.m. on the night of the fifteenth inst?"
'It works,' Grant assured him. 'It works.'
'Well, I'll go away and work too. I'll be in again as soon as I have got the information you want. I'm very grateful to you, Mr Grant. This is a lot better than the Peasants.'
He floated away into the gathering dusk of the winter afternoon, his train-like coat giving an academic sweep and dignity to his thin young figure.
Grant switched on his lamp, and examined the pattern it made on the ceiling as if he had never seen it before.
It was a unique and engaging problem that the boy had dropped so casually into his lap. As unexpected as it was baffling.
What possible reason could there be for that lack of con temporary accusation?
Henry had not even needed proof that Richard was him self responsible. The boys were in Richard's care. If they were not to be found when the Tower was taken over, then that was far finer, thicker mud to throw at his dead rival than the routine accusations of cruelty and tyranny.
Grant ate his supper without for one moment being conscious either of its taste or its nature.
It was only when The Amazon, taking away his tray, said kindly: 'Come now, that's a very good sign. Both rissoles all eaten up to the last crumb I' that he became aware that he had partaken of a meal.
For another hour he watched the lamp-pattern on the ceiling, going over the thing in his mind; going round and round it looking for some small crack that might indicate a way into the heart of the matter.
In the end he withdrew his attention altogether from the problem. Which was his habit when a conundrum proved too round and smooth and solid for immediate solution. If he slept on the proposition it might, tomorrow, show a facet that he had missed.
He looked for something that might stop his mind from harking back to that Act of Attainder, and saw the pile of letters waiting to be acknowledged. Kind, well-wishing letters from all sorts of people; including a few old lags. The really likeable old lags were an outmoded type, growing fewer and fewer daily. Their place had been taken by brash young thugs with not a spark of humanity in their egoc
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