Inspector Queen stood aside to let them pass. There was a mournful look in his eyes as he watched them walk slowly to the main door and join the short line going out. CHAPTER VI IN WHICH THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY TURNS BIOGRAPHER Inspector Richard Queen was a peculiar man. Small and wiry, thatched with grey and wrinkled in fine lines of experience, he might have been a business executive, a night-watchman, or what he chose. Certainly, in the proper raiment, his quiet figure would mold itself to any disguise. This ready adaptability was carried out in his manner as well. Few people knew him as he was. To his associates, to his enemies, to the forlorn scraps of humanity whom he turned over to the due processes of the law, he remained ever a source of wonder. He could be theatrical when he chose, or mild, or pompous, or fatherly, or bull-dogging. But underneath, as someone has said with an over-emphatic sentimentality, the Inspector had “a heart of gold.” Inside he was harmless, and keen, and not a little hurt by the cruelties of the world. It was true that to the people who officially came under his eye he was never twice the same. He was constantly whirling into some new facet of personality. He found this to be good business; people never understood him, never knew what he was going to do or say, and consequently they were always a little afraid of him. Now that he was alone, back in Panzer’s office, the door shut tight, his investigations temporarily halted, the true character of the man shone from his face. At this moment it was an old face—old physically, old and wise spiritually. The incident of the girl he had startled into unconsciousness was uppermost in his mind. The memory of her drawn, horrified face made him wince. Frances Ives-Pope seemed to personify everything a man of years could hope for in his own daughter. To see her shrink under the lash pained him. To see her fiancé turn fiercely in her defense made him blush. Abstemious except for his one mild dissipation, the Inspector reached for his snuff-box with a sigh and sniffed freely.... When there came a peremptory knock on the door, he was the chameleon again—a detective-inspector sitting at a desk and no doubt thinking clever and ponderous thoughts. In truth, he was wishing that Ellery would come back. At his hearty “Come in!” the door swung open to admit a thin, bright-eyed man dressed in heavy overclothes, a woolen muffler wound about his neck. “Henry!” exclaimed the Inspector, starting to his feet. “What the dickens are you doing here? I thought the doctor had ordered you to stay in bed!” District Attorney Henry Sampson winked as he slumped into an armchair. “Doctors,” he said didactically, “doctors give me a pain in the neck. How are tricks?” He groaned and felt his throat gingerly. The Inspector sat down again.