Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/227

216 find the corpse was a conveyancer murdered by a civil servant. A crime of quiet middle-class taste. What sort of fellows are the other fellows?"

"Well, sir, there's a retired engineer, and a young chap, just married, in the Rimington firm, and a naval officer, and several young doctors with consulting-rooms in Harley Street, and one of the Maynards, the Devonshire family. That's all with any rooms on the well. I've seen 'em all, and, if you ask me, they're right out of it; they're not the sort, not one of them."

"I dare say," said Reggie. "They don't sound as if they would fit. None of them heard anything?"

"No, sir; that's queer, to be sure."

"It happened the night of the blizzard. You wouldn't have noticed a bomb. Well, who was Rand?"

"That's what no one knows, sir. He'd only been here a few weeks. They're service flats, you know, and furnished. He gave a banker's reference. Bank says he has no money reason to be missing. Quiet, stable account. Income from investments. Balance three hundred odd. But the bank don't know anything about him. He's had an account for years. He used to live off Jermyn Street, apartment-house. The landlady died last year."

"And the landlady died last year," Reggie repeated. "He's elusive, is Mr. Rand. Same like our