The Chief Constable, escorting Miss Finch to the door, promised that when there was anything that the Police could ‘give’ to Miss Finch and the Clarion, he would see that they did so. He went back, rather swollen by the fascinating smile which the Clarion had given him, to sterner work.
He found Inspector Davis sullenly gazing out of the window, while, their heads together, Pike and Farrow—this sudden, strange alliance—bent their heads over the two letters now side by side.
As the Chief Constable came up Pike raised his head, looking over his shoulder, he said:
‘If you’ll come here, sir, and just have a look at this you’ll see that these two letters, though they look at first sight like duplicates, are not really anything of the sort. They’ve each been written by the same hand, on the same paper, with the same ink, but they aren’t duplicates; one’s a copy of the other.’ As he finished speaking, he suddenly straightened himself. Without another word he went to a corner of the room and from one of Mrs Jeffson’s many occasional tables, picked his hat.
He said, ‘If you’ll forgive me, sir, I’ll be getting along.’
‘Eh?’ said the Chief Constable sharply.
‘If you’ll forgive me, sir,’ Pike repeated firmly, ‘I’ll be getting along.’
‘Eh?’ said the Chief Constable again. ‘What’s that? Getting along … What for? Damn it, man, we haven’t finished.’
But Pike was adamant. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got what you might call a small idea. I’m going to see whether it’s workable before I tell you about it. Don’t think it’s anything big because it isn’t. But it might help … Where will you be this evening, sir?’
‘Here,’ said the Chief Constable fiercely. ‘Here.’
‘Very well, sir, I’ll report here,’ said Pike and was gone.
The Chief Constable glared at the closed door. ‘How that fellah’—he spoke ostensibly beneath his breath but actually with considerable volume—‘ever got where he is at the Yard, I can’t think.’
Inspector Davis from beneath his waxed moustache emitted a coughing sound which was echo of his master’s voice.
Farrow, very glum, said nothing.
II
When Pike had, so summarily, left the meeting in Jeffson’s cottage-Police-Station, the time had been two o’clock. He was not a man who needlessly cut out meals. His experience had taught him, sometimes painfully, that to go without food and drink, when food and drink may properly be had, is to impair a man’s ability. And so the first thing that he did was to call at the garage next to Miss Marable’s where the Police Crossley was housed, and take out the Police Crossley. This took him about an eighth of the time that he could have walked the distance to the Wooden Shack, and at the Wooden Shack, not unduly hurrying, but yet getting it over within twenty minutes, he had a meal, and within five minutes after the bill for the meal was paid, the Blue Crossley was nosing its way over Chaser’s Bridge.
The offices of the Holmdale Electricity Supply Company lie three hundred yards south of Chaser’s Bridge upon the left-hand side of the road. At ten minutes to three, after a wait of seven or eight minutes, Pike was shewn into the Manager’s room.
Mr Calvin, though curt, as was his way, and a thought sardonic-seeming, was nevertheless brisk enough and obliging.
‘Anything we can do,’ said Mr Calvin, ‘of course we will do. I think we’ve told the Police that already.’
‘You have. And, needless to say, we are grateful.’ Pike was curt and business-like too, though of an equal politeness. He put to Mr Calvin certain questions. Mr Calvin having made calculations upon a scribbling pad and once consulted with a subordinate, gave answer in the affirmative.
‘We can do it,’ said Mr Calvin, and shut his mouth like a rat-trap. ‘What we’d like to know, and as soon as possible, is whether you want us to do it or not, Superintendent. You’ll understand that we need a little time for preparation, and we shall need more time than we would normally if you want it done … well …’—Mr Calvin shrugged—‘quietly.’
Pike said: ‘I’ll let you know, if not this evening, before ten-thirty tomorrow morning.’
Mr Calvin nodded. ‘In case you do want it,’ he said, ‘I’ll get the stuff down from our Lewisham depot right away. That won’t hurt and I don’t suppose the charge’ll hurt the Government or whoever it is.’
Again Pike nodded. ‘That’s right, sir.’ He rose to go. He shook hands with Mr Calvin, who, it seemed to him, was one of the few really decisive persons he had met since his arrival in Holmdale twelve days ago.
Outside The Electricity Supply Company’s Office, the Blue Crossley was waiting, and the Crossley’s nose was headed not back towards the interior of Holmdale, but straight for the open country.
Pike was suddenly seized with a wish, an imperative wish, to be alone.
He felt that curious, bursting feeling about the head, which comes to a man when his sub-conscious mind has developed a thought and it tries to compel that thought out of itself into the conscious mind, before it is really ready to deliver it up. He knew that if he went back to Jeffsons and Davises and Chief Constables, the only effect their society would have upon him, would be to thrust this half-born idea still further back into intangibility. He felt that there was a chance that if he were to get away into strange surroundings for an unstrained, uninterrupted two hours, he might, from the recesses of that inner mind, pull this idea.
He opened the door of the Crossley. He got into the car and shut the door behind him. He sat motionless in the driving seat for a full three minutes. At last he started the engine, slipped into gear and went slowly off, heading for the open country …
III
When he got back to Holmdale, coming in this time by the Dale Road entrance, there was not upon his face a look of fulfilment or even satisfaction. He had not, though he had tried and tried, succeeded in bringing that idea—the idea which, he felt, had in it at least the beginnings of a solution to this foul problem—to his conscious mind. All he knew was, that somewhere within him there was a something which wanted to be known, but only wanted to be known in its own good time …
Consequently he was, when he got out of the car to open the door of its garage in Fourtrees Road, pale and glum and preoccupied, with a frown creasing his forehead and closing his eyes to slits. The car housed, he came out into Fourtrees Road and hesitated upon the pavement. He looked first to his right at the garden and pleasantly curtained windows of No. 14. He looked then to his left and across the road, where the lamp outside Jeffson’s cottage showed a pale, sickly radiance. He chose, his sense of the fit and proper driving him to Jeffson’s cottage. He walked there with long quick strides and pushed open the door which was ajar, and within a moment was inside what once had been Mrs Jeffson’s parlour.
Jeffson was there and so were Davis and Farrow, but the Chief Constable had gone.
Pike realised with a start that he should have known by the absence of the Green Daimler that the Chief Constable was no longer there. It showed him, this little lack in observation, how preoccupied he was. He stood just within the doorway of Jeffson’s room and looked at its occupants through the smoke. Jeffson rose clumsily. Davis nodded with a curt nod, but Farrow—the one-time inimical Farrow—came towards him with a greeting.
‘The Chief,’ Farrow said, ‘left a message for you. He had to get back. Would you tell me, or Davis, what it was you were going to tell him and we’ll report when we get back. We’ll be leaving in about twenty minutes. He’s sending a car back for us.’ His tone was surly, his face unsmiling and yet Pike warmed to him.
‘I’ve been,’ Pike said, ‘to the Electricity Company. I asked Calvin, the Manager, whether he could arrange to supply power for searchlights for tomorrow night, and as many nights as we might want them.’
‘Eh!’ said Farrow. And then suddenly his broad heavy face became illuminated with a grin. ‘That’s a good one!’ he said. ‘Here, Davis.’
‘Calvin,’ said Pike, ‘told me it could be arranged if we wanted it. Must say, I haven’t quite made up my mind, though. Anyhow they’ll be ready if we want ’em.’
‘How many?’ said Farrow.
For a moment Pike’s frown was smoothed away, for he was pleased with the result of his efforts.
‘Twelve,’ he said. ‘Twelve doubles. That’s to say, twenty-four lights altogether, in pairs, one pair at each important road junction or wherever we want ’em. Only, we’ve got to tell ’em the wiring points at least four hours before they’re needed.’
Farrow still smiled. It became borne in upon Pike that Farrow, in his own way, was a pleasant person. ‘That’ll knock the old Butch,’ said Farrow, like a large school-boy. ‘Then if he don’t want to operate down the lighted ways, the fact that the lights are there’ll make him shy of the dark ways close to! That’s good, Super.’
Pike shook his head. ‘It’s not good. It’s just a sop as you might say, to Cerebos. But I think you’ve got it wrong, Inspector. My idea was not to have the lights all blazing away all the time. My idea was to have ’em switch on and off, sort of irregularly so that no one would either know when they were going on …’
Farrow slapped fist against palm. ‘And that’s a better one!’ said Farrow. ‘All right, Super, I’ll tell the Chief Constable as soon as we get back.’ He added, sotto-voce: ‘Not that it’ll matter whether I tell him or not … I’ll tell you something; he’s dead feared of you.’
‘That,’ said Pike, turning to go, ‘is a good job.’
He went. He turned sharp left out of Jeffson’s cottage gate and then, crossing the road, came to No. 12. He went in and in the hall met Molly Brade with her daughter Millicent.
Millicent made a rush at him. Millicent had a lot to tell him about Chuffers. First, she had seen the Flying Scotsman roar through Holmdale Station that morning. Second, she had bought a small tin Chuffer with her bockey money. Third, she had evolved a new Chuffer game which, she seemed sure, could only properly be played with the participation of this friend.
Molly Brade intervened. She said, in the tone of one who means exactly the opposite: ‘You’re being a nuisance again, Millicent.’
Millicent stamped her foot. Her wide blue eyes blazed such wrath that even her mother quailed before them. Millicent stamped her foot again. She said:
‘Not nuisance! Talkin’ Chuffers.’ She looked up at Pike with a sudden melting. In an infinitesimal flash of time her whole frame had changed its expression from one of ire to one of almost amorous supplication. She said, the blue eyes fixed upon Pike’s brown ones:
‘Do play Chuffers!’
Pike, shyly but firmly turning down the half-hearted remonstrances of Millicent’s mother, went, tealess, to play Chuffers.
CHAPTER XIII
THERE was another meeting in Jeffson’s cottage at half-past ten upon the next morning. It was the morning of Friday, the 7th December, and the morning of the day during which the Butcher had stated that he would ‘do another job.’
It occurred to Pike as he walked from Miss Marable’s to the Police Cottage, to wonder whether the Butcher, if he could not, by killing someone before midnight, fulfil his promise to the police, would be so disgruntled as to kill himself. Pike both feared not and hoped not—an awkward state of mind, but a state of mind by no means uncommon to him.
This morning the Chief Constable was not in Jeffson’s room, but Farrow and Davis were. And with Farrow and Davis, who had obviously spent much of last night with pen and paper, Pike went over the arrangements for the day.
He approved the scheme for tightening the patrol supervision and approved also the suggestion that the patrols should begin to function, not at 4.30 p.m. when the darkness was almost complete, but as early as 3.15 when the first signs of dusk would begin to evince themselves. He approved also the rearrangement of the patrol groups and control … In short, he approved everything that had been done since the previous afternoon by Davis and Farrow. Farrow, having now got over his first reluctance to show his volte-face in regard to the Superintendent’s merits, frankly beamed. Even Davis, though the points of his waxed moustache still showed tendency to bristle, was more affable than heretofore.
‘And now,’ said Farrow. ‘What about these searchlights, Super?’
There was quiet for a moment before Pike answered, and then he said, slowly:
‘I’ve been thinking about these searchlights most of the night. In a way I want to have ’em put on. In a way I’d rather they weren’t put on—’
‘I know,’ said Farrow, interrupting. ‘You’re thinking, Super, that these searchlights, like the patrols and what not, are all what you might call “preventatitive” measures like—’
‘Exactly.’ Superintendent Pike smiled at Inspector Farrow. ‘That’s just what they are, Farrow, and “preventive” measures are just, really, what I don’t want … But all the same, I believe that when the next hour’s up I shall ring up Calvin and tell him that I want the lights … You know what’s the matter with Englishmen, don’t you? They’re too blame soft-hearted. If we were sensible, if we were Germans or Frenchmen, or any of that sort of lot, we’d have the real humanity to let one or two or even five people die, in order that we could stop this business once and for all … But shall we do it? Shall we blink! We wouldn’t be allowed to act that way. The Government would step in or something.’ The emphasis on the word Government was withering.
‘And you don’t know yet,’ said Davis surlily, ‘whether you’re going to ask for the lights or not?’
Pike looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said curtly. ‘When I do, within an hour, I’ll tell you … Give you a ring if I don’t come back.’ He turned towards the door.
‘Ha!’ said Davis. ‘Where are you going?’
Pike swung round on his heel, a very quick movement. Something in the way in which he looked at Inspector Davis made Inspector Davis almost visibly shrink. There was a long pause.
‘For a nice little walk in the fresh air,’ said Pike, and was gone.
This time he turned right-handed out of Jeffson’s cottage-gate, walked down the length of Fourtrees Road, round the sweep of Fourtrees Crescent, down the hill by the Laurels Nursing Home, then left down the steeper hill, into Dale Road. In Dale Road he hesitated; almost turned left to walk out of Holmdale altogether and down to Billsford; changed his mind and turned right and walked up Dale Road towards the centre of Holmdale.
He walked slowly. His hands were thrust into his pockets and his chin rested upon his tie. His eyes were on the ground and his thoughts only just sufficiently with him to permit of his walking safely.
He came at last to the end of Dale Road and automatically turned right into Market Road. From the junction of Market Road and Dale Road to The Market itself, is perhaps a quarter of a mile. At his ordinary pace Pike would have covered this in something under five minutes. At his pace today he took ten.
He was walking upon the right-hand side of the road—the side, that is, upon which The Market itself lies. He would have passed The Market, not knowing that he had passed it, if it had not been for Mr Percy Godly.
The time was past eleven o’clock and Mr Godly was on his way from the Wooden Shack to the Carters, which lies at the top of Burrowbad Hill on the Main Road, Mr Godly having, apparently, what he would have called, ‘taken a good load aboard’ at the Wooden Shack, was none too steady in his walking. And Pike, as had been said, was walking with very little heed to his progress.
Pike and Mr Godly met, chest to chest, outside the first of The Market’s swing doors. Mr Godly, hiccoughing wildly, reeled, staggered, clutched at a lamp-post and finally fell. Pike picked him up and dusted him and looked rather hard at him.
Mr Godly, waving a white hand, said indistinctly:
‘Absolooly sharmed! Very rare one meetsh genelum! Only too sharmed to’v’e been … to’v’e been … to’v’e been …’ Mr Godly stuck there.
Pike propped him against the lamp-post and lef
t him. He put his hands back into his pockets and resumed his thoughtful walk. He passed along to the end of the easterly façade of The Market.
He would, no doubt, have crossed over the road, which runs between The Market and the post office, and passed down the rest of Market Road to Chaser’s Bridge had not a large and puffing and gravel-filled lorry obstructed his way.
Taking, unconsciously, the line of least resistance, Pike swung to his right, keeping upon the pavement, and thus was walking along the southern frontage of The Market. He passed three-quarters of the length of this frontage, and so was abreast of the small sudden archway from out of which come at odd times The Market’s messenger boys; the archway which divides The Market proper from the offices of The Market’s organisers and also the hair-dressing departments. Unconsciously Pike raised his head to look into this archway for he was accustomed to see here, when he passed—as upon a few occasions he had at this time—the very smart silver-grey and royal-blue perambulator of Miss Millicent Brade.
There again was the perambulator. Pike, alert now, looked round for Molly Brade. She was not in sight nor was, for just this moment, another soul. He crossed to the perambulator. He felt that perhaps a little light conversation about Chuffers would do him good. But he was disappointed. For, instead of being wide-eyed in her carriage, looking out with those far-sighted, large blue eyes across the fields at the just visible railway line, Millicent Brade was lying down, fast asleep.
She had upon her dark head a cap of blue velvet cunningly edged with fur. Over her was a white woollen coverlet across which there solemnly tramped a procession of blue elephants. One arm lay outside the coverlet and from the sleeve of the blue fur-cuffed coat there peeped a hand from which the glove had slipped. It was very cold this morning, and the hand looked blue. Pike, gazing at his small and sleeping friend from the end of her carriage, noticed this hand. He came round to the side of the carriage and gently lifted the hand. He thought that placed under the coverlet the hand would grow warm against the warm little body. With gentle fingers he lifted the hand.
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