In fact the man in the trench coat had approached the line of booths and had walked along swiftly beside it as if he were seeking one which was unoccupied. When he came to the last of the line, which was out of sight of the mouth of the corridor, he turned smartly round behind it and stepped out of the small doorway normally used by hotel servants bringing in luggage, and which flanked the canopied side entrance.
Outside it was neither dark nor light, but at that brief twilit stage when London’s sky, streets and buildings appear all to be draped in different shades of blue, and the newly-lit lamps and the sidelights of the traffic are yellow and inadequate against the fast vanishing daylight. It was also the rush hour and the man in the trench coat melted into the wave of home-going worke
