"I think you're a lot of idiots. You got a man who is innocent. You're busy hounding him to death. And you won't listen to a perfectly good confession when you get one."

"Well, you see, Miss Sellers, there are always things about a case that are known only to the police and are not to be learned from newspapers. The mistake you made was to get up your story from the newspaper accounts. There was one thing you didn't know. And one thing you forgot."

"What did I forget?"

"That no one knew where Christine Clay was staying."

"The murderer did."

"Yes. That is my point. And now — I'm very busy."

"So you don't believe a word I say."

"Oh, yes. Quite a lot of it. You were out all night on Wednesday, you probably went swimming, and you arrived back at lunchtime on Thursday. But none of that makes you guilty of murder."

She got up, in her reluctant, indolent way, and produced her lipstick. "Well," she drawled between applications, "having failed in my little bid for publicity, I suppose I must go on playing blonde nitwits for the rest of my life. It's good I bought a day-return."

"You don't fool me," Grant said, with a not too grim smile as he opened the door for her.

"All right, then, maybe you're right about that, and blast you anyhow," she burst out. "But you're wrong about his doing it. So wrong that your name will stink before this case is over."

And she brushed past an astonished Williams and two clerks, and disappeared.

"Well," said Williams, "that's the first. Humans are queer, aren't they, sir? You know, if we announced the fact that the coat we want has a button missing, there'd be people who would pull the button off their coats and bring it in. Just for fun. As if things weren't difficult enough without that. Not just the usual type, though, was she, sir?"

"No. What did you make of her, Williams?"

"Musical comedy. Looking for publicity to help her career. Hard as nails."

"All wrong. Legitimate stage. Hates her career. Softhearted to the point of self-sacrifice."

Williams looked a little crestfallen. "Of course, I didn't have a chance to talk to her," he reminded.

"No. On looks it was quite a good reading, Williams. I wish I could read this case as well." He sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. "What would you do, Williams, once you had got clear of the Marine?"

Williams understood that he was supposed to be Tisdall.

"I'd take a fairly crowded bus somewhere. First that came to hand. Get off with a crowd of others, and walk off as if I knew where I was going. In fact, wherever I went I'd look as if I knew where I was going."

"And then, what?"

"I'd probably have to take another bus to get out of townified parts."

"You'd get out of built-up areas, would you?"

"Sure!" said Williams, surprised.

"A man's much more conspicuous in open country."

"There are woods. In fact, some of the woods in this part of the world would hide a man indefinitely. And if a man got as far west as Ashdown Forest, well, it'd take about a hundred men to comb Ashdown properly."

Grant shook his head. "There's food. And lodging."

"Sleep out. It's warm weather."

"He's been out two nights now. If he has taken to the country he must be looking shopworn by this time. But has he? Have you noticed that no one has reported him as buying a razor? There's just the chance that he's with friends. I wonder — " his eyes strayed to the chair where Judy had been sitting. "But no! She'd never risk as big a bluff as that. No need for it."

Williams wished to himself that Grant would go to the hotel and have some sleep. He was taking far too much to heart his failure to arrest Tisdall. Mistakes happened to the best of people, and everyone knew that Grant was all right. He had the Yard solid behind him. Why need he worry himself sick over something that might have happened to anyone? There were one or two crabbers, of course — people who wanted his job — but no one paid any attention to the likes of them. Everyone knew what they were getting at. Grant was all right, and everyone knew it. It was silly of him to get so worked up over a little slip.

If a policeman's heart can be said to ache, then Williams's stout heart ached for his superior.

"You can get rid of this disgusting object," Grant said, indicating the coat. "It's twenty years old, at least, and hasn't had a button on it for the last ten. That's one thing that puzzles me, you know, Williams. He had it at the beach, and it was missing when he came back. He had to get rid of that coat somewhere along his route. It isn't a very extensive route, when all is said. And there wasn't time for him to go far off it. He'd be too anxious to get back and cover up his mistake in going away. And yet we haven't turned the coat up. Two duck ponds, both shallow, both well dragged. Three streams that wouldn't hide a penny and wouldn't float a paper boat. Ditches beaten, garden walls inspected on the wrong side, two copses scoured. Nothing! What did he do with it? What would you do with it?"

"Burn it."

"No time. It's damp too. Soaking wet, probably."

"Roll it small and stick it in the fork of a tree. Everyone looks on the ground for things."

"Williams, you're a born criminal. Tell Sanger your theory and ask him to make use of it this afternoon. I'd rather have that coat than have Tisdall. In fact, I've got to have that coat!"

"Talking of razors, you don't think maybe, he took his razor with him, sir?"

"I didn't think of it. Shouldn't think he had the presence of mind. But then I didn't think he'd have the nerve to bolt. I concentrated on suicide. Where are his things?"

"Sanger took them over here in the case. Everything he had."

"Just see if his razor is there? It's just as well to know whether he's shaved or not." There was no razor.

"Well!" said Grant. "Who'd have thought it! 'You disappoint me, Inspector, says he, quietly pocketing the razor, and arranging his getaway with the world's prize chump of a detective watching him. I'm all wrong about that lad, Sergeant. All wrong. I thought first, when I took him from the inquest that he was one of these hysterical, do-it-on-the-spur-of-the-moment creatures. Then, after I knew about the will, I changed my mind. Still thought him a 'poor thing, though. And now I find he was planning a getaway under my very nose — and he brought it off! It isn't Tisdall who's a washout, it's me!"

"Cheer up, sir. Our luck is out at the moment. But you and I between us, and no one else, so help me, are going to put that cold-blooded brute where he belongs," Williams said fervently, not knowing that the person who was to be the means of bringing the murderer of Christine Clay to justice was a rather silly little woman in Kansas City who had never heard of any of them.