He put his sweater over a hanger, shook hands with the umpire, shook hands with his young, fair-haired opponent, and went to the court. Every muscle in his body seemed to sing.
Aunty Martha was very pleased with her new pupils; she had had them watched with great care, and they had all behaved very well. Little Kitty Strangeways was slightly nervous: she needed more practice with crowds. And Cyril Jackson had enjoyed it too much. He almost took chances, to prove how good he was. Cyril was a great one for dares, and would do anything. He might even try to cheat her, for the fun of it.
If he did, of course, he would very swiftly learn that there was never any fun in cheating Aunty Martha. She simply dared not allow it, no matter how ruthless she had to be.
At the Jockey Club’s Headquarters at Newmarket, in Suffolk, there was an unofficial meeting of the stewards; quite normal at this time of the year. The main interest, of course, centred on the Derby, an interest as great today as ever it had been since the first race, nearly two hundred years ago. And there was a great deal of discussion, for no horse had been scratched and there was so far no clear favourite: at least six horses were equally favoured in the betting, to date.
Of course, it was a long time, yet, before the off-nearly three weeks. Horses could fall out, get hurt on the hard courses, or reach and pass the peak of fitness. But every owner and every trainer with whom the Club was in touch reported a clean bill of health and seemed to be in high hopes. If this went on, there would be over thirty runners, not far off a record.
The general consensus of opinion was voiced by Lord Burnaby, the Chairman.
“It should be a very fine race, one of the best and closest -provided only,” and he cast his gaze towards the heavens, “the weather holds!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cross-roads
Gideon put down the receiver after talking to Henry, and knew that he himself stood at the cross-roads of decision. He had never faced such an anxiety; not even when — years ago — there had seemed a real danger of separation between him and Kate. Nor, much later, when their oldest daughter had been near to death, her first child stillborn.
Now, he was conscious of a strange and compelling pressure; yet despite it he had his job to do. Slowly, other thoughts filtered into his mind; he was returning to normal in one way, at least.
Lemaitre was due to telephone from New York in less than half-an-hour, he remembered. And there was the Madderton bank job to review: when the financial big-wigs were upset it always caused trouble, and he wanted to be completely au fait with the case before he was called on to report.
Hobbs asked: “What can I do, sir?”
“That was Henry,” Gideon told him. “The Jamaican girl’s missing. He wants to know whether to question the people she was working with, or let it go for a while. If we question them, they’ll know we’re after them and they’ll be quite sure she’s on the Force. If we don’t —” He broke off, and picked up the receiver. “Get me Mr. Henry, of AB Division.” He looked hard at Hobbs. “No question about it, of course, we’ve got to find the girl. Might put the fear of God into the young hotheads, while we’re at it.”
“Or the fear of Gideon,” Hobbs murmured.
“How anyone could be afraid of telling me the truth — !”‘ Gideon snorted, then broke off abruptly. “Alec, you mean to tell me—?” He drew the mouthpiece closer: “Hallo-Chas? Yes — didn’t need the fifteen minutes, after all. Do you know the names and addresses of this Action Committee? And the Central Committee . . . Good . . . Round them all up -every mother’s son of ‘em! Put several cars on the job,
then use a Black Maria and pick ‘em up where the cars have found them . . . Yes, tell the Press about the round-up — but better not say it’s a Lords demonstration. Eh? . . . Yes, that’ll do . . . Get ‘em all together in one room — if you can . . . The canteen’ll do fine! Right.” He put down the receiver and gave a grim smile. “He’s satisfied, anyhow — that’s what he wanted to do.”
“Will you go and see the crowd?” asked Hobbs.
“I’ll see. Now, what else is — ?” Gideon frowned. Then asked, almost humorously incredulous: “Alec, is Penny scared of me?”
“In some ways, yes,” replied Hobbs, flatly. “In some ways you’re a pretty terrifying person, George. You set standards which —”
He broke off as the internal telephone rang: this might well be Information, with news of Kate. Gideon lifted the receiver quickly, smoothly, with no sign of tension.
“Yes?”
“There’s no one at your house in Harrington Street, sir,” the Chief Inspector in charge of Information reported. “The back door was unlocked, so there was no need to break in. Is there anything else we can do?”
“Have the house watched, and when my wife comes home have me informed at once,” ordered Gideon.
“Right, sir!”
Gideon rang off, and pushed his hair back from his forehead. Then he looked up at Hobbs with a taut smile, pursing his lips in such a way that he really did seem frightening. He didn’t speak for a few moments, and when he did it was almost ruefully.
“I didn’t think the day would come when Kate would talk to you and not to me. You used to scare the wits out of her!”
“I scared Kate?” Hobbs stared, incredulously.
“You see, you don’t know how terrifying you are, either! I—”
Again he broke off, as a long shrill call from the telephone seemed to carry a note of exceptional urgency. Or emergency? He picked it up. “Gideon.”
“There’s a call from New York on the way for you, sir,” the operator told him. “Mr. Lemaitre would like to speak to you personally.”
“Put him through,” Gideon said. He motioned to the extension on Lemaitre’s old desk, and Hobbs picked up a pencil and the telephone at the same moment. Two or three different noises and two or three different voices, one strongly American in tone, sounded before Lemaitre’s own broad Cockney twang came across as clearly as if he were somewhere in London.
“Hi there, George!”
“Hallo, Lem,” Gideon responded, equably.
“We’re really on to something!”
“Let’s have it,” urged Gideon.
“I’ve talked to these smoking-room boys — all four of them — and they all say the same thing,” Lemaitre reported, “These two Americans are in the horse-training business — from Kentucky. Here goes: Colonel Jason Hood . . . JASON Hood, got that? And Thomas Moffat . . . Moffat — that’s it! They may be staying at the Chase Hotel, Kensington . . . In their cups, they said they’d come over to clean up on a big deal involving the Derby. It was obviously on their minds, the whole trip. Someone’s fixing it the way Charlie Blake told me, but I don’t know who or how. They didn’t ever name the people they were going to see, but we can take it from there, can’t we? One good long talk with them should fix it. I’m booked on a plane that gets me into London about ten-thirty tomorrow morning — but if I know me, after a flight that long, I won’t be much good for —”
“We’ll make a start this end,” Gideon promised, looking a question at Hobbs, who nodded. So he had all the names down: would start the new line of inquiry at once. “Why don’t you stay over there for a day or two, Lem? You could check the American end more closely — find out more about the Colonel and —”
“Must I, George?” Lemaitre sounded like a rebellious little boy.
“Don’t you want to?” .
“I don’t want to lose a minute getting the bracelets on the swine who killed Charlie,” Lemaitre said fervently. “If we could break Jackie Spratt’s at the same time, I’d die happy!”