I
"Tommy," remarked Miss Gladys Norman one day as Thompson entered her
room through the glass-panelled door, "have you ever thought what I
shall do fifty years hence?"
"Darn my socks," replied the practical Thompson.
"I mean," she proceeded with withering deliberation, "what will
happen when I can't do the hundred in ten seconds?"
Thompson looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"My cousin Will says that if you can't do the hundred yards in ten
seconds you haven't an earthly," she explained. "It's been worrying
me. What am I to do when I'm old and rheumaticky and the Chief does
three on the buzzer? He's bound to notice it and he'll _look_."
Malcolm Sage's "look" was a slight widening of the eyes as he gazed
at a delinquent. It was his method of conveying rebuke. That "look"
would cause Thompson to swear earnestly under his breath for the
rest of the day, whilst on Gladys Norman it had several distinct
effects, the biting of her lower lips, the snubbing of Thompson, the
merciless banging of her typewriter, and a self-administered rebuke
of "Gladys Norman, you're a silly little ass," being the most
noticeable.
For a moment Thompson thought deeply, then with sudden inspiration
he said, "Why not move your table nearer his door?"
"What a brain!" she cried, regarding him with mock admiration. "You
must have been waving it with Hindes' curlers. Yes," she added, "you
may take me out to dinner to-night, Tommy."
Thompson was in the act of waving his hat wildly over his head when
Malcolm Sage came out of his room. For the fraction of a second he
paused and regarded his subordinates.
"It's not another war, I hope," he remarked, and, without waiting
for a reply, he turned, re-entered his room and closed the door.
Gladys Norman collapsed over her typewriter, where with heaving
shoulders she strove to mute her mirth with a ridiculous dab of pink
cambric.
Thompson looked crestfallen. He had turned just in time to see
Malcolm Sage re-enter his room.
Three sharp bursts on the buzzer brought Gladys Norman to her feet.
There was a flurry of skirt, the flash of a pair of shapely ankles,
and she disappeared into Malcolm Sage's room.
II
"It's a funny old world," remarked Gladys Norman that evening, as
she and Thompson sat at a sheltered table in a little Soho
restaurant.
"It's a jolly nice old world," remarked Thompson, looking up from
his plate, "and this chicken is it."
"Chicken first; Gladys Norman also ran," she remarked scathingly.
Thompson grinned and returned to his plate.
"Why do you like the Chief, Tommy?" she demanded.
Thompson paused in his eating, resting his hands, still holding
knife and fork, upon the edge of the table. The suddenness of the
question had startled him.
"If you must sit like that, at least close your mouth," she said
severely.
Thompson replaced his knife and fork upon the plate.
"Well, why _do_ you?" she queried.
"Why do I what?" he asked.
She made a movement of impatience. "Like the Chief, of course." Then
as he did not reply she continued: "Why does Tims like him, and the
Innocent, and Sir James, and Sir John Dene, and the whole blessed
lot of us? Why is it, Tommy, why?"
Thompson merely gaped, as if she had propounded some unanswerable
riddle.
"Why is it?" she repeated. Then as he still remained silent she
added, "There's no hurry, Tommy dear; just go on listening with your
mouth. I quite realise the compliment."
"I'm blessed if I know," he burst out at last. "I suppose it's
because he's 'M.S.,'" and he returned to his plate.
"Yes, but _why_ is it?" she persisted, as she continued mechanically
to crumble her bread. "That's what _I_ want to know; why is it?"
Thompson looked at her a little anxiously. By nature he was inclined
to take things for granted, things outside his profession that is.
"It's a funny old world, Tommikins," she repeated at length, picking
up her knife and fork, "funnier for some than for others."
Thompson looked up with a puzzled expression on his face. There were
times when he found Gladys Norman difficult to understand.
"For a girl, I mean," she added, as if that explained it.
Thompson still stared. The remark did not strike him as illuminating.
"It may be," she continued meditatively, "that I like doing things
for the Chief because he was my haven of refuge from a wicked world;
but that doesn't explain why you and Tims----"
"Your haven of refuge!" repeated Thompson, making a gulp of a
mouthful, and once more laying down his knife and fork, as he looked
across at her curiously.
"Before I went to the Ministry I had one or two rather beastly
experiences." She paused as if mentally reviewing some unpleasant
incident.
"Tell me, Gladys." Thompson was now all attention.
"Well, I once went to see a man in Shaftesbury Avenue who had
advertised for a secretary. He was a funny old bean," she added
reminiscently, "all eyes and no waist, and more curious as to
whether I lived alone, or with my people, than about my speeds. So I
told him my brother was a prize-fighter, and----"
"But you haven't got a brother," broke in Thompson.
"I told him that for the good of his soul, Tommy, and of the girls
who came after me," she added a little grimly.
"It was funny," she continued after a pause. "He didn't seem a bit
eager to engage me after that. Said my speeds (which I hadn't told
him) were not good enough; but to show there was no ill-feeling he
tried to kiss me at parting. So I boxed his ears, slung his own
inkpot at him and came away. Oh! it's a great game, Tommy, played
slow," she added as an after-thought, and she hummed a snatch of a
popular fox-trot.
"The swine!"
Thompson had just realised the significance of what he had heard.
There was an ugly look in his eyes.
"I then got a job at the Ministry of Economy and later at the
Ministry of Supply, and the Chief lifted me out by my bobbed hair
and put me into Department Z. That's why I call him my haven of
refuge. See, dearest?"
"What's the name of the fellow in Shaftesbury Avenue?" demanded
Thompson, his thoughts centring round the incident she had just
narrated.
"Naughty Tommy," she cried, making a face at them, "Mustn't get angry and
vicious. Besides," she added, "the Chief did for him."
"You told him?" cried Thompson incredulously, his interest still
keener than his appetite.
"I did," she replied airily, "and he dropped a hint at Scotland Yard.
I believe the gallant gentleman in Shaftesbury Avenue has something
more than a smack and an inky face to remember little Gladys by. He
doesn't advertise for secretaries now."
Thompson gazed at her, admiration in his eyes.
"But that doesn't explain why I always want to please the Chief,
does it?" she demanded. "In romance, the knight kills the villain
for making love to the heroine, and then gets down to the same dirty
work himself. Now the Chief ought to have been bursting with
volcanic fires of passion for me. He should have crushed me to his
breast with merciless force, I beating against his chest-protector
with my clenched fists. Finally I should have lain passive and
unresisting in his arms, whilst he covered my eyes, ears, nose and
'transformation' with fevered, passionate kisses; not pecks like
yours, Tommy; but the real thing with a punch in them."
"What on earth----" began Thompson, when she continued.
"There should have been a fearful tempest on the other side of his
ribs. I should----"
"Don't talk rot, Gladys," broke in Thompson.
"I'm not talking rot," she protested. "I read it all in a novel that
sells by the million." Then after a moment's pause she continued:
"He saved me from the dragon; yet he doesn't even give me a box of
chocolates, and everybody in Whitehall knows that chocolates and
kisses won the war. When I fainted for him and he carried me into
his room, he didn't kiss me even then."
"You wouldn't have known it if he had," was Thompson's comment.
"Oh! wouldn't I?" she retorted. "That's all you know about girls, Mr.
Funny Thompson."
He stared across at her, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.
"He doesn't take me out to dinner as other chiefs do," she
continued; "yet I hop about like a linnet when he buzzes for me. Why
is it?"
She gazed across at Thompson challengingly.
A look of anxiety began to manifest itself upon his good-natured
features. Psycho-analysis was not his strong point. In a vague way
he began to suspect that Gladys Norman's devotion to Malcolm Sage
was not strictly in accordance with Trade Union principles.
"There, get on with your chicken, you poor dear," she laughed, and
Thompson, picking up his knife and fork, proceeded to eat
mechanically. From time to time he glanced covertly across at Gladys.
"As to the Chief's looks," she continued, "his face is keen and taut,
and he's a strong, silent man; yet can you see his eyes hungry and
tempestuous, Tommy? I can't. Why is it," she demanded, "that when a
woman writes a novel she always stunts the strong, silent man?"
Thompson shook his head, with the air of a man who has given up
guessing.
"Imagine getting married to a strong, silent man," she continued,
"with only his strength and his silence, and perhaps a cheap
gramophone, to keep you amused in the evenings." She shuddered.
"No," she said with decision, "give me a regular old rattle-box
without a chin, like you, Tommy."
Mechanically Thompson's hand sought his chin, and Gladys laughed.
"Anyway, I'm not going to marry, in spite of the tube
furniture-posters. Uncle Jake says it's all nonsense to talk about
marriages being made in heaven; they're made in the Tottenham Court
Road."
Thompson had, however, returned to his plate. In her present mood,
Gladys Norman was beyond him. Realising the state of his mind, she
continued:
"He's got a head like a pierrot's cap and it's as bald as a
fivepenny egg, when it ought to be beautifully rounded and covered
with crisp curly hair. He wears glasses in front of eyes like bits
of slate, when they ought to be full of slumbrous passion. His jaw
is all right, only he doesn't use it enough; in books the strong,
silent man is a regular old chin-wag, and yet I fall over myself to
answer his buzzer. Why it is, I repeat?" She looked across at him
mischievously, enjoying the state of depression to which she had
reduced him.
Thompson merely shook his head.
"For all that," she continued, picking up her own knife and fork,
which in the excitement of describing Malcolm Sage she had laid down,
"for all that he would make a wonderful lover--once you could get
him started," and she laughed gleefully as if at some hidden joke.
Thompson gazed at her over a fork piled with food, which her remark
had arrested half-way to his mouth.
"He's chivalrous," she continued. "Look at the way he always tries
to help up the very people he has downed. It's just a game with
him----"
"No, it's not," burst out Thompson, through a mouthful of chicken
and sauté potato.
She gave him a look of disapproval that caused him to swallow
rapidly.
"The Chief doesn't look on it as a game," he persisted. "He's out to
stop crime and----"
"But that's not the point," she interrupted. "What I want to know is
why do I bounce off my chair like an india-rubber ball when he
buzzes?" she demanded relentlessly. "Why do I want to please him?
Why do I want to kick myself when I make mistakes? Why--Oh! Tommy,"
she broke off, "if you only had a brain as well as a stomach," and
she looked across at him reproachfully.
"Perhaps it's because he never complains," suggested Thompson, as he
placed his knife and fork at the "all clear" angle, and leaned back
in his chair with a sigh of contentment.
"You don't complain, Tommy," she retorted; "but you could buzz
yourself to blazes without getting me even to look up."
For fully a minute there was silence; Gladys Norman continued to
gaze down at the débris to which she had reduced her roll.
"No," she continued presently, "there is something else. I've
noticed the others; they're just the same." She paused, then
suddenly looking across at him she enquired, "What is loyalty,
Tommy?"
"Standing up and taking off your hat when they play 'God Save the
King,'" he replied glibly.
She laughed, and deftly flicked a bread pill she had just
manufactured, catching Thompson beneath the left eye and causing him
to blink violently.
"You're a funny old thing," she laughed. "You know quite well what I
mean, only you're too stupid to realise it. Look at the Innocent--
for him the Chief is the only man in all the world. Then there's
Tims. He'd get up in the middle of the night and drive the Chief to
blazes, and hang the petrol. Then there's you and me."
Thompson drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.
"I _think_ I know why it is," she said, nodding her pretty head
wisely. She paused, and as Thompson made no comment she continued:
"It's because he's human, warm flesh and blood."
"But when I'm warm flesh and blood," objected Thompson, with
corrugated brow, "you tell me not to be silly."
"Your idea of warmth, my dear man, was learnt on the upper reaches
of the Thames after dark," was the scathing retort.
"Yes, but----" he began, when she interrupted him.
"Look what he did for Miss Blair. Had her at the office and then--
then--looked after her."
"And afterwards got her a job," remarked Thompson. "But that's just
like the Chief," he added.
"Where did you meet him first, Tommy?" she enquired, as she leaned
forward slightly to light her cigarette at the match he held out to
her.
"In a bath," was the reply, as Thompson proceeded to light his own
cigarette.
"You're not a bit funny," she retorted.
"But it was," he persisted.
"Was what?"
"In a bath. He hadn't had one before and----"
"Not had a bath!" she cried. "If you try to pull my leg like that,
Tommy, you'll ladder my stockings."
"But I'm not," protested Thompson. "I met the Chief in a Turkish
bath, and he went into the hottest room and crumpled, so I looked
after him, and that's how I got to know him."
"Of course, you couldn't have happened to mention that it was a
_Turkish_ bath, Tommy, could you?" she said. "That wouldn't be you
at all. But what makes him do things like he did for Miss Blair?"
"I suppose because he's the Chief," was Thompson's reply.
Gladys Norman sighed elaborately. "There are moments, James
Thompson," she said, "when your conversation is almost inspiring,"
and she relapsed into silence.
For the last half-hour Thompson had been conscious of a feeling of
uneasiness. It had first manifested itself when he was engaged upon
a lightly grilled cutlet; had developed as he tackled the lower
joint of a leg of chicken; and become an alarming certainty when he
was half-way through a plate of apple tart and custard. Gladys
Norman's interest in Malcolm Sage had become more than a secretarial
one.
Mentally he debated the appalling prospect. By the time coffee was
finished he had reached an acute stage of mental misery. Suddenly
life had become, not only tinged, but absolutely impregnated with
wretchedness.
It was not until they had left the restaurant and were walking along
Shaftesbury Avenue that he summoned up courage to speak.
"Gladys," he said miserably, "you're not----" then he paused, not
daring to put into words his thought.
"He's so magnetic, so compelling," she murmured dreamily. "He knows
so much. Any girl might----"
She did not finish the sentence; but stole a glance at Thompson's
tragic face.
They walked in silence as far as Piccadilly Circus, then in the
glare of light she saw the misery of his expression.
"You silly old thing," she laughed, as she slipped her arm through
his. "You funny old thing," and she laughed again.
That laugh was a Boddy lifebelt to the sinking heart of Thompson.