A man in livery approached us, and led us towards a bonny serving girl. She said, 'Do you wish to view the breakfast?' You'd have thought it was a work of art, and in fact it was – all laid out on three sideboards before the high windows overlooking the hotel pleasure gardens. I noticed for the first time that Sunday, 11 February had become a fine winter's morning, and this feast required nothing less. At the sideboards, well- to-do folk were eyeing bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, devilled kidneys, haddock, hams and cold meats and roasts, all on silver plates and warmed by spirit lamps. We took our seats, informed a waitress of our selections; she brought the preliminaries of coffee, toast, pots of marmalade, honey, unknown imported jams. She smiled often as she worked and it was a very good smile indeed; you didn't tire of it.
'This keeps you going until dinnertime, you know,' said the Chief, and his face could not contain his twisted, half- embarrassed smile. He was thinking of the morning he'd left me in the cold Police Office with nothing but a cold kettle. But I was wondering whether we ought to be in the hotel at all. It was the Chief himself who'd made all those rules about our not being seen together, after all.
'You're not a dog, lad,' said the Chief, as he poured coffee, 'a creature trained to absolutely obedience at all times. You must operate in two minds. What most folk – most policemen especially – don't understand about police work is that it's brain work of the most confoundedly difficult sort.'
As he said this, the swell sitting opposite a woman at the next table turned to face us, and it was like a field gun swinging on its pivot. He was a bastard – I could see that right away.
'You must go along with your bad lads,' said the Chief, 'but stop short before the point of no return.'
'And what then?' The Chief spooned a lump of marmalade on to his toast. It fell off. He spooned it on again. 'Remember,' he said, 'that you will not have brought the business to that point. It would have arrived there anyway, and when it does come, if there's no help to hand, you must do your best to face down 'Face down what?' I asked after a while, but the Chief was eating his toast and marmalade. 'Evil,' he said, when he'd finished. 'But I have no means of giving the alarm.' Our neighbour, the toff, was prodding at bacon with a fork. He seemed very down on the whole show. This was not a very good breakfast as far as he was concerned. He looked up at the woman sitting before him: 'Want fruit?' he said, in a dead voice. I did not hear her reply. The Chief picked up another bit of toast. It was fascinating to watch him eat, and also quite off-putting. I suddenly remembered what the Police Gazette had said about Howard or Sampson: 'Will probably be found in hotels'. 'Look,' said the Chief, 'we must net these lads, and we must net them finely. And that means an ambush, yes, but at the right time. At the moment what've we got? Theft of a cylinder of some sort?' Was the aristocratic misery alongside us listening? He was looking at the woman. It was hard to say. 'It'll be used to cut metal, sir,' I said quietly, 'as I've already mentioned.' 'Theft of a cylinder,' repeated the Chief, 'pick-pocketing within the station; an assault. Other minor matters possibly. It's very thin pickings, and yet you suspect this scoundrel – the number one man – of all sorts.' 'I'm sure he killed the Camerons' I said, in an under- breath. 'They were in his way somehow.'
'Add to that,' said the Chief, who continued loud, in spite of my whispers, 'the fact that you say the next meeting is not the actual doings, but more in the way of… plotting?'
I nodded, although I wasn't quite sure of that. As I tried to recall exactly what had been said on the cart coming away from the goods yard, a question came: why would Sampson want Allan Appleby involved in the planning of the great doing?
'We'll meet tomorrow in the Police Office at six in the morning,' the Chief was saying. 'No, meet at five. I've to be in Newcastle at half-past seven. We'll talk over whatever happens tonight and see if we have a better understanding of their final object.'
I asked the Chief: 'Any news on Richard Mariner?'
'Mariner?' said the Chief, a strange look on his face.
'The night porter here who did away with himself.'
'I asked about him. Spoke to the general manager. Nothing in it. The fellow always was a miserable sort – he'd had the morbs for years…'
The girl came up again, with the bacon and eggs and related matters. She served very daintily, but clumped off when she'd set it all out, which made her even more charming somehow. The Chief watched her as she walked away