Parker was, however, roused to some enthusiasm by Wimsey's report of his conversations with Milligan.
“What incredible luck you do have, Peter. People who, in the ordinary way, would avoid you like the plague, gate-crash into your parties at the psychological moment and offer you their noses to lead them by.”
“Not so much luck, old man,” said Wimsey. “Good guidance, that's all. I sent the fair Dian an anonymous letter, solemnly warning her against myself and informing her that if she wanted to know the worst about me, she had only to inquire at my brother's address. It's a curious thing, but people
cannot
resist anonymous letters. It's like free sample offers. They appeal to all one's lower instincts.”
“You are a devil,” said Parker. “One of these days you'll get into trouble. Suppose Milligan had recognized you.”
“I prepared his mind to accept a striking resemblance.”
“I wonder he didn't see through it. Family resemblances don't usually extend to details of teeth and so on.”
“I never let him get close enough to study details.”
“That ought to have made him suspicious.”
“No, because I was rude to him about it. He believed me all the time, simply because I was rude. Everybody suspects an eager desire to curry favour, but rudeness, for some reason, is always accepted as a guarantee of good faith. The only man who ever managed to see through rudeness was St. Augustine, and I don't suppose Milligan reads the
Confessions
. Besides, he wanted to believe in me. He's greedy.”
“Well, no doubt you know your own business. But about this Victor Dean affair. Do you really believe that the head of this particular dope-gang is on Pym's staff? It sounds quite incredible.”
“That's an excellent reason for believing it. I don't mean in a
credo quia impossible
sense, but merely because the staff of a respectable advertising agency would be such an excellent hiding-place for a big crook. The particular crookedness of advertising is so very far removed from the crookedness of dope-trafficking.”
“Why? As far as I can make out, all advertisers are dope-merchants.”
“So they are. Yes, now I come to think of it, there is a subtle symmetry about the thing which is extremely artistic. All the same, Charles, I must admit that I find it difficult to go the whole way with Milligan. I have carefully reviewed the staff of Pym's, and I have so far failed to find any one who looks in the least like a Napoleon of crime.”
“But you seem convinced that the murder of Victor Dean was an inside job. Or do you now think that some stranger was hiding on the roof and did away with Dean because he was on the point of splitting on the gang? I suppose an outsider could get access to Pym's roof?”
“Oh, easily. But that wouldn't explain the catapult in Mrs. Johnson's desk.”
“Nor the attack on me.”
“Not if the same person that killed Dean attacked you too.”
“Meaning that it might have been Willis? I take it that Willis is not the Napoleon of crime, anyhow.”
“Willis isn't a Napoleon of anything. Nor, I fancy, is the chap with the catapult. If he had been, he'd have had the common sense to use his own catapult and burn it afterwards. As I see him, he is a person of considerable ingenuity but limited foresight; a person who snatches at the first thing that is offered him and does his best with it, but lacks just that little extra bit of consideration that would make the thing a real success. He lives from hand to mouth, as you may say. I dare say I could spot him without much difficulty–but that's not what you want, is it? You'd rather have the Napoleon of the dope-traffic, wouldn't you? If he exists, that is.”
“Certainly I should,” said Parker, emphatically.
“That's what I thought. What, if you come to think of it, is a trifle like an odd murder or assault, compared with a method of dope-running that baffles Scotland Yard? Nothing at all.”
“It isn't, really,” replied Parker, seriously. “Dope-runners are murderers, fifty times over. They slay hundreds of people, soul and body, besides indirectly causing all sorts of crimes among the victims. Compared with that, slugging one inconsiderable pip-squeak over the head is almost meritorious.”
“Really, Charles! for a man of your religious upbringing, your outlook is positively enlightened.”
“Not so irreligious, either. Fear not him that killeth, but him that hath power to cast into hell. How about it?”
“How indeed? Hang the one and give the other a few weeks in jail–or, if of good social position, bind him over or put him on remand for six months under promise of good behaviour.”
Parker made a wry mouth.
“I know, old man, I know. But where would be the good of hanging the wretched victims or the smaller fry? There would always be others. We want the top people. Take even this man, Milligan, who's a pest of the first water–with no excuse for it, because he isn't an addict himself–but suppose we punish him here and now. They'd only start again, with a new distributor and a new house for him to run his show in, and what would anybody gain by that?”
“Exactly,” said Wimsey. “And how much better off will you be, even if you catch the man above Milligan? The same thing will apply.”
Parker made a hopeless gesture.
“I don't know, Peter. It's no good worrying about it. My job is to catch the heads of the gangs if I can, and, after that, as many as possible of the little people. I can't overthrow cities and burn the population.”
“'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,” said Wimsey, “calcine its clods and set its prisoners free. There are times, Charles, when even the unimaginative decency of my brother and the malignant virtue of his wife appear to me admirable. I could hardly say more.”
“You have a certain decency of your own, Peter,” replied Parker, “which I like better, because it is not negative.” Having given voice to this atrocious outburst of sentiment, he became extremely red in the face, and hastened to cover up his lapse from good taste. “But at the present moment I must say you are not being very helpful. You have been investigating a crime–if it is a crime–for some weeks now, and the only tangible result is a broken collar-bone for me. If you could confine yourself to breaking your own collar-bone–”
“It has been broken before now,” said Wimsey, “and in no less good a cause. You shouldn't shove your beastly collar-bone into my affairs.”
At this moment, the telephone-bell rang.
It was half-past eight in the morning, and Wimsey had been consuming an early breakfast with his brother-in-law, prior to their departure each to his own place of business. Lady Mary, who had been supplying their bodily necessities and leaving them to their argument, took up the receiver.
“It's from the Yard, darling. Something about that man Puncheon.”
Parker took the instrument and plunged into an animated discussion, which ended with his saying:
“Send Lumley and Eagles along at once, and tell Puncheon to keep in touch with you. I'm coming.”
“What's up?” inquired Wimsey.
“Our little friend Puncheon has seen his bloke in dress clothes again,” said Parker, cursing as he tried to get his coat over his damaged shoulder. “Saw him hanging about the
Morning Star
offices this morning, buying an early paper or something. Been chasing him ever since, apparently. Landed out at Finchley, of all places. Says he couldn't get on to the 'phone before. I must push off. See you later. Cheerio, Mary dear. Bung-ho, Peter.”
He bounced out in a hurry.
“Well, well,” said Wimsey. He pushed back his chair and sat staring vacantly at the wall opposite, on which hung a calendar. Then, emptying the sugar-bowl on the table-cloth with a jerk, he began, frowning hideously, to built a lofty tower with its contents. Mary recognized the signs of inspiration and stole quietly away to her household duties.
Forty-five minutes afterwards she returned. Her brother had gone, and the banging of the flat-door after him had flung his column of sugar-lumps in disorder across the table, but she could see that it had been a tall one. Mary sighed.
“Being Peter's sister is rather like being related to the public hangman,” she thought, echoing the words of a lady with whom she had otherwise little in common. “And being married to a policeman is almost worse. I suppose the hangman's relatives are delighted when business is looking up. Still,” she thought, being not without humour, “one might be connected with an undertaker, and rejoice over the deaths of the righteous, which would be infinitely worse.”
Sergeant Lumley and P.C. Eagles found no Hector Puncheon at the small eating-house in Finchley from which he had telephoned. They did, however, find a message.
“He has had breakfast and is off again,” said the note, written hurriedly on a page torn from the reporter's note-book. “I will telephone to you here as soon as I can. I'm afraid he knows I am following him.”
“There,” said Sergeant Lumley, gloomily. “That's an amachoor all over. 'Course 'e lets the bloke know 'e's bein' followed. If one of these newspaper fellows was a bluebottle and 'ad to follow an elephant, 'e'd get buzzin' in the elephant's ear, same as 'e'd know what 'e was up to.”
P.C. Eagles was struck with admiration at this flight of fancy, and laughed heartily.
“Ten to one 'e'll lose 'im for keeps, now,” pursued Sergeant Lumley. “Gettin' us pushed off 'ere without our breakfusses.”
“There ain't no reason why we shouldn't have our breakfusses, seein' as we are here,” said his subordinate, who was of that happy disposition that makes the best of things. “'Ow about a nice pair o' kippers?”
“I don't mind if I do,” said the sergeant, “if only we're allowed to eat 'em in peace. But you mark my words, 'e'll start ringin' up again afore we 'as time to swallow a bite. Which reminds me. I better ring up the Yard and stop me lord Parker from traipsin' up 'ere. 'E mustn't be put about. Oh, no!”
P.C. Eagles ordered the kippers and a pot of tea. He used his jaws more readily for eating than for talking. The sergeant got his call, and returned, just as the eatables were placed on the table.
“Says, if 'e rings up from anywhere else, we better take a taxi,” he announced. “Save time, 'e says. 'Ow's 'e think we're goin' to pick up a taxi 'ere. Nothing but blinkin' trams.”
“Order the taxi now,” suggested Mr. Eagles, with his mouth full, “so's to be in readiness, like.”
“And 'ave it tickin' up the thruppences for nothing? Think they'll call that legitimate expenses? Not 'arf. 'You pay that out of your own pocket, my man,' that's what they'll say, the lousy skin-flints.”
“Well, 'ave yer grub,” suggested Mr. Eagles, pacifically.
Sergeant Lumley inspected his kipper narrowly.
“'Ope it's a good one, that's all,” he muttered. “Looks oily, it do. 'Ope it's cooked. Eat a kipper what ain't properly cooked through and you gets kipper on your breath for the rest of the day.” He forked a large portion into his mouth without pausing to remove the bones, and was obliged to expend a painful minute rescuing them with his fingers. “Tcha! it beats me why Godamighty wanted to put such a lot of bones into them things.”
P.C. Eagles was shocked.
“You didn't oughter question the ways of Godamighty,” he said, reprovingly.
“You keep a civil tongue in your 'ed, my lad,” retorted Sergeant Lumley, unfairly intruding his official superiority into this theological discussion, “and don't go forgettin' what's due to my position.”
“There ain't no position in the eyes of Godamighty,” said P.C. Eagles, stoutly. His father and his sister happened to be noted lights in the Salvation Army, and he felt himself to be on his own ground here. “If it pleases 'Im to make you a sergeant, that's one thing, but it won't do you no good when you comes before 'Im to answer to the charge of questionin' 'Is ways with kippers. Come to think of it, in 'Is sight you an' me is just the same as worms, with no bones at all.”
“Not so much about worms,” said Sergeant Lumley. “You oughter know better than to talk about worms when a man's eating his breakfuss. It's enough to take any one's appetite away. And let me tell you, Eagles, worm or no worm, if I have any more lip from you–Drat that telephone! What did I tell you?”
He pounded heavily across to the insanitary little cupboard that held the instrument, and emerged in a minute or two, dismally triumphant.
“That's 'im. Kensington, this time. You 'op out an' get that taxi, while I settle up 'ere.”
“Wouldn't the Underground be quicker?”
“They said taxi, so you damn well make it taxi,” said Sergeant Lumley. While Eagles fetched the taxi, the sergeant took the opportunity to finish his kipper, thus avenging his defeat in religious controversy. This cheered him so much that he consented to take the Underground at the nearest suitable point, and they journeyed in comparative amity as far as South Kensington Station, and thence to the point indicated by Hector Puncheon, which was, in fact, the entrance to the Natural History Museum.
There was nobody in the entrance-hall who resembled Hector Puncheon in the least.
“Suppose 'e's gone on already?” suggested P.C. Eagles.
“Suppose 'e 'as,” retorted the sergeant. “I can't 'elp that. I told 'im to telephone 'ere if 'e did or to let them know at the Yard. I can't do no more, can I? I better take a walk round, and you sit 'ere to see as they don't come out. If they do, you be ready to take up this other bird's trail and tell Puncheon to set 'ere till I come. An' don't let your bird see you talking to Puncheon, neether. And if they comes out and you see me a-follerin' of them, then you foller on be'ind an' keep yourself outer sight, see?”
Mr. Eagles saw clearly–as indeed he well might, for he knew quite as much about his duties as Sergeant Lumley. But the worm still rankled in the sergeant's breast. Mr. Eagles strolled over to a case of humming-birds and gazed at it with absorbed interest, while Mr. Lumley went heavily up the steps, looking as much as possible like a country cousin bent on seeing the sights.
He had been in the entrance-hall about ten minutes, and had almost exhausted the humming-birds, when he saw something reflected in the glass case which made him sidle softly round so as to command a view of the staircase. A portly person in an overcoat and a top-hat was coming slowly down, one hand thrust deep into his overcoat pocket, the other swinging carelessly at his side. P.C. Eagles looked past him up the stair; there was no sign, either of Hector Puncheon or of Sergeant Lumley, and for a moment the constable hesitated. Then something caught his eye. In the gentleman's left-hand overcoat pocket was a folded copy of the
Morning Star
.