CHAPTER 21DAN MCGRATH tapped lightly on the door of Dalrymple-Hughes’s second-floor flat and waited. He was back from the inquest on Arthur Pegott, an hour and a half lost getting there and back, with the coroner’s proceedings taking seven and one-quarter minutes before they were adjourned until another day. Mr. Pinkerton had not showed, nor the man he was supposed to look for, nor anyone he could conceivably imagine to be the little Welshman’s friend calling down anathemas on unrepentant sinners. There was no one he had ever seen before, and not even Inspector Bull. He rapped impatiently on the door again. It was eleven o’clock and he still had not seen Mary.
“Oh sir, she’s gone downstairs.” Sarah, the maid who had taken Betty’s place, put her head out of the door of the flat across the
