The door near Gideon opened and a messenger, by prearrangement, came and handed him a note. It was his signal to leave, and he had much to do — yet he was sorry to go.
He closed the door softly on Bligh’s voice, and walked slowly along to his office. Bligh had put into words thoughts which had sometimes flickered through his own mind, but had never really taken shape. The remarkable -and heartening — thing, was how raptly everyone was listening. He turned into his office and found three notes, each under the same paperweight. Please call the Commissioner — Please telephone Sir Maurice Forbes (Forbes was the Chairman of Madderton’s) — Please call Mrs. Gideon. Without the slightest hesitation he lifted the receiver and said:
“Get my wife for me, at once.”
“Yes, sir. The Commissioner —”
“My wife, at once!”
“Yes, sir.” The girl went off the line and he held the receiver to his ear and looked through other notes. Lemaitre would be in the office at half-past three . . . Chipper Lee had been remanded in custody for eight days . . . John Spratt, one of the partners in Jackie Spratt’s Limited, had been seen by a Yard man who was a member of the R.A.A. Club, talking with Sebastian Jacobus, a notoriously violence-prone Right-winger . . . D.C. Juanita Conception would suffer no permanent injury but would certainly be scarred, although plastic surgery would greatly lessen the effect. The total number of complaints of pick-pockets and bag-snatchers at Wimbledon to date was up nearly twenty per cent on the same period last year . . . There was a note from Chief Superintendent French of the Wimbledon area: “I’ll be grateful for ten minutes after the conference.” No reason why not, thought Gideon; then had a flash of panic. Why hadn’t Kate come through? If she’d had another attack like last night’s -
The telephone crackled, and the operator said: “Mrs. Gideon for you, sir.” And then, in a voice quick as a scared rabbit, she went on: “The Commissioner says it’s very urgent.” She went off the line and Kate said quietly: “You mustn’t keep him waiting, George.”
“Not a moment after I’ve heard what you want,” Gideon promised.
There was a pause; not long, but long enough to make him wonder. Then, in a husky voice, she went on: “Do you know, George, I’d no idea how much you cared. No, dear, you needn’t say a word. I’ve seen the doctor — or rather, he came to see me.”
Gideon’s heart began to thump.
“And?”
“It isn’t cancer. That’s certain. It’s — well, apparently I’ve been overdoing it, and my heart’s protesting. He called it cardiac pain. He says there’s nothing to worry about provided I rest. He wants me to have a lazy holiday for at least two weeks, and then take it very easy for a while. George, I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
There was another pause. A very long pause, in which Gideon’s own heart thumped. Then: “I can imagine,” he .told her. Heart — Kate, with heart trouble, and so relieved because it wasn’t cancer! “Well, it’s serious enough,” he went on. “We can’t ignore that advice.” Then, gruffly: “Got your bags packed, yet?”
She laughed, but almost at once asked intently: “George, could you possibly get a week or two off?”
“Well work that out soon,” Gideon promised. “Meanwhile, you can go down to Brighton for a week or two and I’ll come down each night: no trouble about that. Penny and Malcolm can manage for themselves — no problem there, either. Well go down on Friday at the latest: I’ll fix a room.” He made a note to ask the Brighton police to make arrangements. “I tried the hospital but this Dr. Phillips was out.”
Kate laughed. “Apparently someone told him I was your wife, that’s why he came to see me. There are some advantages in being married to a policeman, you see!”
She rang off, on an almost gay note, and Gideon sat back and wiped the sweat off his forehead. It was a long minute or two before he was able to put that talk out of his mind and focus his attention again on his desk. Immediately, he saw the message: Call the Commissioner, and rang through at once on the internal telephone.
“Yes?” Scott-Marie’s voice could sound like the slash of a whip.
“Gideon,” Gideon said.
“Ah, Gideon.” There wasn’t a hint of ‘at last’ in Scott-Marie’s voice. “I’ve had confirmation of the July General Election, and apparently the date will be officially announced at the weekend. This could affect your tactics with your staff.”
“To tell you the truth,” Gideon admitted, “I’ve hardly given it a thought. It’s been one of those periods when everything happens at once.” He resisted a temptation to tell Scott-Marie about Kate, and went on: “If the subject of leave does crop up, I’m at liberty to say why, then?”
“Yes.” Scott-Marie paused. “That was a very satisfactory outcome at Hampstead, George.”
“Couldn’t have been much better,” Gideon agreed. He frowned: “I don’t want to overdo it, but if ever a police officer deserved some kind of acknowledgement, Juanita Conception does.”
Scott-Marie answered very slowly.
“Yes. I’ll see that a recommendation goes through. Do you know how she is?”
“There shouldn’t be too much in the way of a scar, and no permanent disability,” Gideon was able to report. “And Henry’s hand wound is only a matter of days.”
“Good. Do you think the demonstration will still be staged?”
“I’m checking as closely as I can, but anything they do now will have to be on a kind of ad hoc basis, and won’t be easy to discover in advance. But I shouldn’t worry about that, sir,” Gideon added, with complete confidence. “We’ll cope.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“There’s one thing you can do for me,” Gideon told him.
“What is it?”
“Have a word with- Sir Maurice Forbes, sir, and try to stop him from harassing us. We caught the Madderton bank thief, we’ve got most of the money back, and unless there’s some special reason not to, I’d like to treat that case as routine.”
“I shall have a word with him,” promised Scott-Marie. “Is there anything else?”
“No, sir. Thank you.”
Gideon rang off, relieved on two counts, and once more confirmed in his confidence that he could rely on Scott-Marie. It was now a little after twelve o’clock, and the Outdoor Events meeting should soon be over, unless Bligh made the oldest of all mistakes and went on too long. He rang for Hobbs, but there was no response. So the meeting was still on. He pulled the day’s reports towards him and had been going through them for five minutes when there was a tap at his passage door. He called “come in”, and the door opened and Chief Superintendent Thomas French of CD Division, which included Wimbledon, came in.
Gideon had never been sure whether French cultivated his appearance to suit his name, or whether there was some remarkable natural coincidence. Whichever was true, he looked a Frenchman, with his dark, waxed moustache, rather blue jowl, thick-lensed pince-nez and suits cut so that shoulders and neck seemed to be part of one another. He was brisk-moving, and his accent was slightly ‘off’ the natural London Cockney and equally ‘off’ the natural Oxford. His appearance always suggested that he was trying to create the impression that, if he only cared to divulge it, he could tell a great deal that was known to very few.
“Good-morning, Geo — Commander.”
“Hallo,” Gideon said. “Come in.”
Two or three men passed in the corridor, hence the sudden switch from the familiar to the formal. The door closed and Gideon shook hands.