She was very lovely, and ignoring Petrie’s frown, Sterling struggled to his feet.
“Please sit down, dear!” Fleurette pressed her hands on his shoulders. “No! you must rest.
“But I feel so rottenly guilty.”
“I know it’s a shame that this big darling has to come pottering around all the shops with me,” said Fleurette, laughingly. “But there are so many things I want before we leave for Egypt. The longer we stay the more I shall want! And I don’t believe he really minds.” She linked her arm in Petrie’s and leaned her head upon his shoulder. “Do you?”
“Mind?” he said, and hugged her. “It’s a joy to be with you, dear. And although Alan is temporarily crocked, it’s only right that you should get out sometimes, after all.”
“I suggest cocktails,” said Sir Denis, his good humour quite restored; and was about to press a bell when the ringing of a telephone in the lobby arrested him in the act.
“7 can make cocktails,” said Fleurette, gaily. “I’ll make you one none of you has ever tasted before, if you’ll just wait until I take my hat off.”
She ran out. Petrie watched her with gleaming eyes. This miraculous double of his beautiful wife had brought a new happiness into his life, keen as only a joy can be which one has relinquished for ever.
Fey rapped upon the door, and in response to Nayland Smith’s snappy “Come in,” entered.
“Yes, Fey, what is it?”
“There’s a P.C. Ireland on the telephone, sir; he says you know him—and he has something which he believes to be important to tell you.”
“Ireland?” Gallaho growled. “That’s the constable who was on duty at Professor Ambrose’s house on the night the business started.”
“A good man,” snapped Nayland Smith. “I marked him at the time.”
He went out to the lobby.
CHAPTER 50
THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
“Strangely like old times, Smith!”
Nayland Smith stared at Petrie. Gallaho, bowler worn at a rakish angle, sat on the seat before them in the Scotland Yard car.
This was one of those nondescript nights which marked the gradual dispersal of the phenomenal fog of 1934. There was a threat in the air that the monster might at any moment return. The car was speeding along beside a Common. Lamps gleamed yellowly where roads crossed it. One could see, through gaunt, unclothed trees, a distant highroad.
‘Yes,” Smith returned. “Some queer things have happened to us, Petrie, on that Common.”
“The queerest thing of all is happening now,” Petrie went on. “The inevitable cycle of it is almost appalling. Here we are, after all the years, back again in the same old spot.”
“Sir Denis pointed out to me this queer cycle, doctor, which seems to run through our lives,” Gallaho said, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’ve thought about it a lot since. And I can see, now that over and over again it crops up. I suppose Sir Denis has told you that we were actually in your old room early last week?”
“Yes,” said Petrie, and stared vaguely from the window.
There came a silent interval.
Sterling had been deposited in his apartment at a hotel in Northumberland Avenue. “You are under my orders, now,” Petrie had said, “and I don’t want you out on this foul night. I dislike that cough. Lie down when you have had something to eat. I shall of course come and see you when I return. . . .”
The doctor had been loath to leave his daughter at Sir Denis’s flat, where they were staying. But recognizing how keenly he wanted to go, Fleurette had insisted. “I have victimized you all the afternoon, dear; I think you deserve an hour off. I shall read until you come back. . . .”
“This may be a wild-goose chase,” growled Gallaho suddenly, “but on the other hand, it may not. We’ve got to remember the old bloke may have been drunk or he may have been barmy. . . .”
“From what Ireland told me,” said Nayland Smith, “I don’t think either of those possibilities calls for consideration. Hello! Isn’t this where we get out?”
The driver pulled up on a street corner and the three alighted.
This street, lined with small suburban houses, so characteristic of the outlying parts of London, vividly recalled to Petrie the days when he had practised in this very district, and when his patients had inhabited just such houses. There was a considerable stream of traffic and at some points beyond it seemed to be badly congested.
P.C. Ireland was standing in the shadow of a wall which lined the street for twenty yards or so on one side, bordering the garden of a large house situated upon a corner facing the Common.
“Ah, there you are, Constable,” Gallaho said gruffly.
“Good evening,” said Sir Denis. “All luck comes your way in this case, Constable.”
“Yes, sir. It looks like it.”
“Repeat,” Smith directed tersely, “in your own words, what you told me on the telephone.”
“Very good, sir.” The man paused for a moment; then:
“There’s some cable-laying job going on at the comer of the lane there which cuts across the Common; a big hole in the road and a lot of drain pipes stacked up. When the gang ceased work this evening, and the night watchman came on, I thought there was likely to be a jam with the traffic, and so I stepped across and asked him to put another red lamp on this side to show where drivers should pull out. That’s how I got into conversation with him, sir. He’s a bit of a character and he said—I’m sticking as nearly as possible to his own words—if all coppers were human, it might be better for some of them. I asked him what he meant by that; but when he told me the story, which I thought it was my duty to report to you——”
“You were quite right,” snapped Nayland Smith.
“——I called up the inspector, and he told me to stand-by as you suggested, sir; there’s another man on my beat.”
“We’ll get the rest of the story from the night watchman,” growled Gallaho.
“He’s no friend of the Force, Inspector,” Ireland nodded. “He might talk more if you said you were newspaper men.”
“Bright lad!” growled Gallaho. He turned to Sir Denis. “Will you do the talking, sir?”
Nayland Smith nodded.
“Leave it to me.”
The hole in the road with its parapets of gravel and wood blocks protected by an outer defence of red poles from which lanterns were suspended, was certainly obstructing the traffic. But at the moment that the party of three reached it, a temporary clearance had been effected, and the night watchman surveyed an empty street.
His quarters, a sort of tarpaulin cave constructed amidst a mass of large iron piping, housed a plank seat and some other mysterious items of furniture. A fire in a brazier glowed redly in the darkness, and added additional colour to that already possessed by the night watchman.
This peculiar character, who favoured a short grey beard but no moustache—his upper lip appearing to possess a blue tinge in contrast to the redness of his nose—wore the most dilapidated bowler hat which Nayland Smith had ever seen in his life, and this at an angle which startled even Inspector Gallaho. He also wore two overcoats; the outer garment being several inches shorter than the inner.
He was engaged at the moment upon the task of frying bacon in the square lid of a biscuit tin which he manipulated very adroitly with a pair of enormous pincers, obviously designed for some much less delicate task. He looked up as the three men paused, leaning on one of the red poles.
“Upon my word!” Nayland Smith exclaimed, importing a faint trace of Cockney into his accent. “You blokes do get about, don’t you?” He turned to Gallaho. “Funny I should see this chap here, to-night. Last week I saw him down in Limehouse.”
“Did you, now?” said the watchman, evidently much gratified. “I’ll say that’s funny; I’ll say more, I’ll say it’s bloody funny!”