The second boy said, "Got a message for you, Syd," in a voice which showed that he was swelling with importance.
"You can keep it," said Syd sourly.
"You'll wish you hadn't said that."
"Listen, Charlie, I don't want to talk to you or no one, get to hell out of here, can't you?"
"Okay, okay," said Charlie, and backed away a yard; young Syd could box! "It's a message from my Dad, though, he says it's important. He'd have given it to you himself, only he knows the cops are watching you."
Young Syd's eyes lost their viciousness in a momentary flicker of interest.
"What's it all about?"
"Dad wants to see you tonight, without the cops knowing, see. Can you make it?"
"The flippin' busies watch me all the time."
"That's what Dad said," went on young Charlie, "but it's okay. You've got to climb over the school wall into the builder's yard. Someone'll be waiting in a van, you nip inside the van and you'll be okay. Dad says it's important."
Syd's eyes were shining.
"Okay," he said, "okay."
Abbott didn't see the boy, after school. The rest of the children came out, but not Syd Benson. The teachers came out, too. It wasn't until Benson had been missing for over half an hour that another boy was found who had seen him climb into the builder's yard next to the school.
There was no trace of him now.
13. Clues
Gideon heard Abbott's voice, low-pitched and completely lacking the bright eagerness which had been there before. From a long-term point of view, this wouldn't do Abbott any harm; it was never a bad thing to have a job go sour on you in the early days, and too long a run of early successes could do a lot of harm. But it was a thousand pities he had to learn his lesson on this job.
Obviously, Abbott had done everything that could be done at short notice.
"All right, and don't forget it isn't the end of the world," Gideon said. "I'll have a word with the Division. We've got a woman watching young Liz, so you switch over to Mrs. Benson and that man of hers, Arthur Small. Know him?"
"Yes, sir, if you remember, I reported last night. . ."
"Oh, yes," said Gideon. "All right. Good-by."
He rang off, and found himself looking down at a photograph, which had come in only a little while ago, of Arthur Small, who was in charge of the shop where Ruby Benson worked. The shop was one of a chain, with a male manager and female staff; there were three assistants junior to Ruby, as well as Small. Small was in the late forties, rather dapper, and in his way good-looking. He was going a little thin on top, and wore horn-rimmed glasses which gave his face a top-heavy look. Gideon, knowing that it was more than just an affair between him and Ruby, wondered how it would end. Even when Benson was caught, Ruby would be tied to him; she and Small couldn't get married.
The reports on Small were all excellent.
He had been questioned, and had said flatly that he was going to stay at Ruby's house from now until Benson was caught, and if the police didn't like it, they could lump it. That showed spirit if nothing else.
But young Syd . . .
Gideon put everything in hand: a widespread search, photographs of the boy to the newspapers, questioning of the schoolmasters and the other boys; but no reports came in. The builder's men were questioned, but no one admitted having seen young Syd. It was a complete blank, and Gideon didn't like it.
Benson might be in London; might have got hold of the boy; might be within a mile or so of the Yard.
Benson wasn't; that night, the third of freedom, he spent lying low in a house on the outskirts of Birmingham, with Freddy Tisdale. It was quite a night, for they had feminine company.
The body still lay under the little car on the cold ground and so far the snow had prevented any serious degree of decomposition.
No one else visited the furnished house.
Reports of the theft of a car from the car park near Millways, and of the theft of a car from a private garage on the outskirts of Stoke, reached the Yard in the usual way. Obviously, it was possible that one of the escaped men had taken these, but a dozen cars or more had been stolen from the same area during the past week.
Both cars were found within twenty-four hours. There were no fingerprints in either of them; but in the one found in the Stoke car park there was a little roll of parking tickets of the kind used to refill the machines used at Millways Corporation. The fact that the car park attendant was missing had also been reported; the general belief was that he had absconded. During the first and second days of his disappearance, those councillors and Council officials who had opposed the employment of an ex-convict were loud in their righteousness and in the vigor of their "We told you so."
Then, on the fourth morning, a dog, howling and sniffing, led an elderly man to the car park attendant's body.
"My God," breathed Gideon.
Now they had something to get their teeth into. The stolen car was quickly connected with the old lag's murder; it was clear that a pair of the prisoners had got as far south as Stoke, probable that they had gone farther south. Then a man from the Stoke Police Department's Fingerprints Bureau, checking the second stolen car, found not fingerprints but glove prints.
"Pigskin or imitation pigskin, with a cut in the thumb and worn on the inside edge of the thumb," he said in his report, which reached Gideon on the afternoon of the fourth day.
Soon reports began to flow in.
The police knew what they were looking for, had confirmation from Alderman and Hooky that the other four had gone off in pairs, knew that one of the two wore pigskin gloves, and realized that meant that they had probably got hold of other clothes. A Millways C.I.D. man, trying to find out if clothes had been taken from the scene of any local burglary, learned instead that some food had been stolen from a grocery shop near the canal. The shopkeeper and his wife were quite sure, because they had been taking stock on the night before they'd made the discovery, and had counted the half-pound packets of butter and some packets of biscuits. They had suspected a sneak thief, and hadn't reported the missing food until they'd heard that the police were anxious to know about every kind of theft on the night of the big prison break.
Two glove thumbprints, identical with those discovered on the stolen cars, were found on tins of soup and beneath a shelf in the shop. Immediately, this news brought a concentration of police to the canal area. A sergeant who took the routine in his stride collected all the keys of nearby furnished houses from the agents.
Benson's first hiding-place was found, and the report sped to London.
"Now we're really moving," Gideon said, and he felt a fierce excitement. "Benson's prints were all over the house, so were Tisdale's. We've a list of the clothes that have been stolen, size of shoes, hats, everything. There was a careful inventory made before the owners left the place empty; we've got the description down to the last detail."
"Spread 'em around," said Lemaitre, and rubbed his hands together. "We'll soon pick the swine up now."
They were not picked up that night, for they were in Birmingham; reveling.
Young Syd wasn't found, either.
The Assistant Commissioner, often a late bird, looked into Gideon's office about half past nine that night, and found Gideon there alone. That wasn't unusual. Gideon had a mass of reports in front of him, and looked up from the one he was reading: a psychiatrist's report on William Rose, the same psychiatrist who had attended him in his childhood. Gideon put it aside, stretched back in his chair, and then bent down and opened a cupboard.
"I know what you're after," he said. "One of these days I'm going to put a fresh item on the expense sheet—one bottle of whisky for official consumption!" He put a bottle on the desk, then a siphon, then two glasses. "If you want to know what I think," he went on, "I think this is one of the lousiest weeks I've ever had at the Yard."
The A.C. looked at the gurgling whisky.
"They all seem like that," he said. "Don't let it get you down
, George."
Gideon pushed a glass toward him.
"Oh, it'll pass, but it's like seeing a blank wall every way you look. I did think we'd get something when we found out where Benson had been and what clothes he was wearing, but—well, mustn't expect miracles, I suppose."
"What's really upset you?" the A.C. asked. "Not the newspaper?"
"If I had my way, I'd dump all crime reporters in the sea," growled Gideon, and then unexpectedly he laughed. "Oh, we can't blame 'em! Four violent criminals still free, then Edmundsun, and then young Benson. No wonder we're making headlines. Chap I'm sorry for is Abbott," he went on. "Seems to think it's nobody's fault but his."
"Like Gideon, like Abbott," the A.C. said, and gave his quick grin. "Funny thing about that boy, though. No sign of him?"
"No. I'm as worried as hell."
"Think someone's hiding him?"
"He could have found a spot to keep under cover by himself, I suppose," said Gideon thoughtfully, "but as far as his mother knows, he had only about sixpence on him, and kids get hungry. If I had to bet, it'd be that he went to a place where he knew he'd be looked after. We've checked all of Benson's friends, and haven't got anywhere at all. He nipped over into that builder's yard, and just hasn't been seen since. The yard opens onto the Mile End Road, dozens of people pass it every hour of the day, and we haven't picked up one who saw the kid."
"Think Benson's had anything to do with it?"
"I think Benson's had something to do with everything," said Gideon, savoring his whisky. "But then, I've a Benson obsession at the moment. That man's running round with a knife, and there isn't a better knife artist in the country—the way he killed that poor devil near Millways shows that. One thrust, and it went right home. He wouldn't need long to kill his wife or her beau."
The A.C. said, "That's not like you, George. You know he'll never get near enough."
Gideon shrugged. "Unless he's soon caught, I'll believe that anything's possible. But you're right, of course; it's not reasonable."
"No. What about this Primrose Girl murder?"
Gideon tapped the report he had been reading. "I've never read a case which looked more open and shut," he said. "There's a clear medical history of mental instability when a child, there's all the evidence that Smedd's accumulated, and except for one thing, it looks foolproof."
"What's the one thing?"
"Rose's sister's story. Nothing shakes it. And Rose himself sticks to it, too—as well as his lost knife story. He says he had this quarrel with Winnie Norton in the woods, left her in a temper, went toward his home, feeling like hell, and met his sister; and she treated him to the pictures. There's no doubt at all that if they went into those pictures Rose didn't kill the girl. Death was at about seven o'clock—the broken watch as well as medical evidence proves that. Mary Rose says she and her brother were inside the picture palace before six—and it's pretty certain that the girl really was there. It was a busy evening, there were dozens going in just about that time, and a hundred or so coming out. The girl can describe every film, the shorts, the news, the cartoon and the advertisements—she even remembers one of the tunes on the record player during the interval! If her brother was with her, he couldn't have killed that girl. Smedd says that he's done everything possible to find anyone who saw either the girl or her brother, without result. And that's the element of doubt," Gideon went on. "If someone had seen her without her brother, we'd know where we are. But she was there. She'd announced she was going beforehand, and it's as near a certainty as a thing can be. If she wasn't noticed, then the pair of them might not have been."
"See what you mean," said the A.C. "That's all that's on your mind?"
"I've got a lot of stuff going through the courts tomorrow," Gideon told him. "Nine C.I.s, as many D.I.s and twelve sergeants are all scheduled to give evidence in one court or other. Falling over each other. Old Birdy will be back in Number One, and Lemaitre will have to go there. We had a squeak that there'll be a bullion raid at the London Airport tomorrow, so I've sent half a dozen men up to watch. It's probably a false alarm, but we can't take risks. Take it from me, we could have handled the Benson job much better last week; just now we're stretched as far as we can go. And if there wasn't enough on our plate, there's that attempted rape job out at Wimbledon."
"Unrelieved gloom," the Assistant Commissioner observed; but his looks belied him. "What have you been working late on?"
"Had a session with young Cummings," said Gideon. "He says he's got a feeling that the Edmundsun job will spread a long way before it's over. I'm seeing Edmundsun's wife tomorrow. Cummings thinks she might know who her husband was working with . . ."
The A.C. stopped him with a laugh.
"George," he said, "I'm not going to let you get away with that one. I was talking to Lemaitre, and he told me you put Cummings up to it. Think it'll work?"
"From what I can gather, the wife was in love with him," said Gideon, smiling. "Bit of a spitfire, and if she thinks she's got anyone to hate, she'll hate."
"I'll leave it to you," the A.C. conceded. "Now if I were you, I'd go home; it's late."
"Can't grumble about this week," Gideon said. "I've been home for supper two nights out of three, and I'll be home in time for a nightcap tonight." He stood up, and stifled a yawn. "Any truth in the rumor that you're likely to retire?" He smiled as he looked straight into the A.C.'s face. "I've been reading the Sunday Sentinel you see."
"That's one of the things I came to have a word with you about," the A.C. said quietly. "No, George, I'm not retiring yet. I always planned to have seven years, if they didn't throw me out, and I've four to go. That should make you about fifty-three when you take over, and you ought to hold the job down for eleven or twelve years."
"They won't put me in your place," Gideon said flatly.
"They'll be bloody fools if they don't," said the other man and finished his whisky. "Good night!"
Gideon went through the brightly-lit corridors of the quiet building.
Down below, in the Information Room, they would be busier now than at any time during the day; the night's crop of crimes was being reported. In Fingerprints and Records, in the Photographic Division, in Ballistics—in fact everywhere on the C.I.D. section, there would be experts at work, more than at some periods during the day; and yet you couldn't make night into day, the place had a dead look. The clerical staff weren't here, of course, and the administrative staff were out at the pictures or watching television or listening to the radio, at church socials, at their hobbies, or perhaps cuddling. Gideon grinned at himself, and had a sneaking thought that he was getting a bit too prosy.
He drove home at a steady pace.
Kate, Prudence, Priscilla and Matthew were still up, having a hand of whist. Tom, the oldest son, was working in the north of England, and only came home occasionally; Malcolm, the nine-year-old, was in bed. Gideon watched the game, winked at Kate when he saw her play the wrong card and so give Priscilla a trick, and then sat back in his armchair. Pleasant. There were times when this seemed to be the only part of life which wasn't seamy.
Yet William Rose had spread his influence here.
What was the truth about that boy?
It was a little before midnight when Gideon went to bed, and Kate looked through the newspapers as he undressed. She didn't pester him, but he could see that she read the reports about young Syd Benson closely. He told her that there was no trace of the boy.
By half past twelve they were both asleep.
At two o'clock the telephone bell rang.
Gideon was in the deep sleep of the early hours, and heard the sound as through a thick mist. Then he felt something stir. Next he felt Kate leaning across him, her breast against his shoulder. He fought to open his eyes, and grunted to let her know that he was waking up. She said something, then switched on the light near the telephone.
"It's something about those prisoners."
In that instant, Gideon was wide awake.
; "They got the others?" He snatched the telephone. "Hallo, Gideon speaking . . ."
"Where?" he breathed.
Kate saw his expression, the tightening of his lips, the way the muscles at the side of his face worked. His eyes no longer looked sleepy. He said, "Okay, I'll come right away," and put the receiver down. Kate didn't say: "George, must you?" but started to get out of bed.
"You needn't get up," Gideon protested.
"I'm going to make you a cup of tea, you're not going out at this hour without something to warm you."
He grunted, "Thanks."
"It isn't Benson, is it?"
"No, two of the others—Jingo Smith and Matt Owens," Gideon told her. "They've been traced to a warehouse and factory near the docks, locked themselves in the laboratory, and threaten to blow the place up if the police don't let 'em go. Blurry fools," growled Gideon, "but it's the kind of thing Jingo Smith would try, he always was a flamboyant fool. The lunatics didn't send for me until the last minute, they've the fire brigade out and half the police force, I shouldn't wonder."
Kate said, "Oh."
"You don't have to worry," said Gideon, and stared at her in surprise, for she looked almost frightened. "Here, Kate, I'll be all right."
From the door she said, "Sometimes I wonder if you know what fear is. Get your clothes on, and don't forget that woolly waistcoat, it's cold tonight."
"Well," grinned Gideon, "you should know, you're wearing nylon and not much else." He tossed her his own woolen dressing gown, and then turned round to dress.
14. Cornered
The streets near the warehouse had been cordoned off, and it wasn't until he had been recognized that Gideon was allowed to go through. As he drew nearer the warehouse, he saw the fire engines with their ladders up and two men perched on a turntable that seemed to be a vast distance up in the starlit sky. The shapes of tall warehouses, of cranes and of the masts of ships showed up dark against the stars. There were the sounds inseparable from a massed crowd of people. Uniformed police and several plain-clothes men stood around, and one after another they saluted Gideon. He drove slowly to a point where there was no room to pass other cars, got out, and walked toward a little group of men near the surrounded warehouse. Car headlights and one ship's searchlight shone on the walls and the windows of this place, and the light was reflected from the glass. Not far from the spot where the group of men waited was an ambulance; two men were being given first aid.
Gideon at work; three complete novels: Gideon's day, Gideon's week, Gideon's night Page 12