TO INTRODUCE 719
Some moments of silence followed. Sounds of traffic from the Embankment
penetrated dimly to the room of the Assistant Commissioner; ringing of
tram bells and that vague sustained noise which is created by the
whirring of countless wheels along hard pavements. Finally:
“You have selected a curious moment to retire, Chief Inspector,” said
the Assistant Commissioner. “Your prospects were never better. No doubt
you have considered the question of your pension?”
“I know what I’m giving up, sir,” replied Kerry.
The Assistant Commissioner slowly revolved in his chair and gazed sadly
at the speaker. Chief Inspector Kerry met his glance with that
fearless, unflinching stare which lent him so formidable an appearance.
“You might care to favor me with some explanation which I can lay
before the Chief Commissioner?”
Kerry snapped his white teeth together viciously.
“May I take it, sir, that you accept my resignation?”
“Certainly not. I will place it before the responsible authority. I can
do no more.”
“Without disrespect, sir, I want to speak to you as man to man. As a
private citizen I could do it. As your subordinate I can’t.”
The Assistant Commissioner sighed, stroking his neatly brushed hair
with one large hand.
“Equally without disrespect, Chief Inspector,” he murmured, “it is news
for me to learn that you have ever refrained from speaking your mind
either in my presence or in the presence of any man.”
Kerry smiled, unable wholly to conceal a sense of gratified vanity.
“Well, sir,” he said, “you have my resignation before you, and I’m
prepared to abide by the consequences. What I want to say is this: I’m
a man that has worked hard all his life to earn the respect and the
trust of his employers. I am supposed to be Chief Inspector of this
department, and as Chief Inspector I’ll kow-tow to nothing on two legs
once I’ve been put in charge of a case. I work right in the sunshine.
There’s no grafting about me. I draw my salary every week, and any man
that says I earn sixpence in the dark is at liberty to walk right in
here and deposit his funeral expenses. If I’m supposed to be under a
cloud—there’s my reply. But I demand a public inquiry.”
At ever increasing speed, succinctly, viciously he rapped out the
words. His red face grew more red, and his steel-blue eyes more fierce.
The Assistant Commissioner exhibited bewilderment. As the high tones
ceased:
“Really, Chief Inspector,” he said, “you pain and surprise me. I do not
profess to be ignorant of the cause of your—annoyance. But perhaps if I
acquaint you with the facts of my own position in the matter you will
be open to reconsider your decision.”
Kerry cleared his throat loudly.
“I won’t work in the dark, sir,” he declared truculently. “I’d rather
be a pavement artist and my own master than Chief Inspector with an
unknown spy following me about.”
“Quite so—quite so.” The Assistant Commissioner was wonderfully
patient. “Very well, Chief Inspector. It cannot enhance my personal
dignity to admit the fact, but I’m nearly as much in the dark as
yourself.”
“What’s that, sir?” Kerry sat bolt upright, staring at the speaker.
“At a late hour last night the Secretary of State communicated in
person with the Chief Commissioner—at the latter’s town residence. He
instructed him to offer every facility to a newly appointed agent of
the Home office who was empowered to conduct an official inquiry into
the drug traffic. As a result Vine Street was advised that the Home
office investigator would proceed at once to Kazmah’s premises, and
from thence wherever available clues might lead him. For some reason
which has not yet been explained to me, this investigator chooses to
preserve a strict anonymity.”
Traces of irritation became perceptible in the weary voice. Kerry
staring, in silence, the Assistant Commissioner continued:
“I have been advised that this nameless agent is in a position to
establish his bona fides at any time, as he bears a number of these
cards. You see, Chief Inspector, I am frank with you.”
From a table drawer the Assistant Commissioner took a visiting-card,
which he handed to Kerry. The latter stared at it as one stares at a
rare specimen. It was the card of Lord Wrexborough, His Majesty’s
Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, and in the
cramped caligraphy of his lordship it bore a brief note, initialled,
thus:
[Illustration]
Some moments of silence followed; then:
“Seven-one-nine,” said Kerry in a high, strained voice. “Why
seven-one-nine? And why all this hocus-pocus? Am I to understand, sir,
that not only myself but all the Criminal Investigation Department is
under a cloud?”
The Assistant Commissioner stroked his hair.
“You are to understand, Chief Inspector, that for the first time
throughout my period of office I find myself out of touch with the
Chief Commissioner. It is not departmental for me to say so, but I
believe the Chief Commissioner finds himself similarly out of touch
with the Secretary of State. Apparently very powerful influences are at
work, and the line of conduct taken up by the Home office suggests to
my mind that collusion between the receivers and distributors of drugs
and the police is suspected by someone. That being so, possibly out of
a sense of fairness to all officially concerned, the committee which I
understand has been appointed to inquire into the traffic has decided
to treat us all alike, from myself down to the rawest constable. It’s
highly irritating and preposterous, of course, but I cannot disguise
from you or from myself that we are on trial, Chief Inspector!”
Kerry stood up and slowly moved his square shoulders in the manner of
an athlete about to attempt a feat of weight-lifting. From the
Assistant Commissioner’s table he took the envelope which contained his
resignation, and tore it into several portions. These he deposited in a
waste-paper basket.
“That’s that!” he said. “I am very deeply indebted to you, sir. I know
now what to tell the Press.”
The Assistant Commissioner glanced up.
“Not a word about 719,” he said, “of course, you understand this?”
“If we don’t exist as far as 719 is concerned, sir,” said Kerry in his
most snappy tones, “719 means nothing to me!”
“Quite so—quite so. Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which I
ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to
arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only
be compared to that employed by the Russian police under the Tsars.”
Half an hour later Chief Inspector Kerry came out of New Scotland Yard,
and, walking down on to the Embankment, boarded a Norwood tramcar. The
weather remained damp and gloomy, but upon the red face of Chief
Inspector Kerry, as he mounted to the upper deck of the car, rested an
expression which might have been described as one of cheery truculence.
Where other passengers, coat collars upturned, gazed gloomily from the
windows at the yellow murk overhanging the river, Kerry looked briskly
about him, smiling pleasurably.
He was homeward bound, and when he presently alighted and went swinging
along Spenser Road towards his house, he was still smiling. He regarded
the case as having developed into a competition between himself and the
man appointed by Whitehall. And it was just such a position,
disconcerting to one of less aggressive temperament, which stimulated
Chief Inspector Kerry and put him in high good humor.
Mrs. Kerry, arrayed in a serviceable rain-coat, and wearing a plain
felt hat, was standing by the dining-room door as Kerry entered. She
had a basket on her arm. “I was waiting for ye, Dan,” she said simply.
He kissed her affectionately, put his arm about her waist, and the two
entered the cosy little room. By no ordinary human means was it
possible that Mary Kerry should have known that her husband would come
home at that time, but he was so used to her prescience in this respect
that he offered no comment. She “kenned” his approach always, and at
times when his life had been in danger—and these were not of infrequent
occurrence—Mary Kerry, if sleeping, had awakened, trembling, though the
scene of peril were a hundred miles away, and if awake had blanched and
known a deadly sudden fear.
“Ye’ll be goin’ to bed?” she asked.
“For three hours, Mary. Don’t fail to rouse me if I oversleep.”
“Is it clear to ye yet?”
“Nearly clear. The dark thing you saw behind it all, Mary, was dope!
Kazmah’s is a secret drug-syndicate. They’ve appointed a Home office
agent, and he’s working independently of us, but...”
His teeth came together with a snap.
“Oh, Dan,” said his wife, “it’s a race? Drugs? A Home office agent?
Dan, they think the Force is in it?”
“They do!” rapped Kerry. “I’m for Leman Street in three hours. If
there’s double-dealing behind it, then the mugs are in the East End,
and it’s folly, not knavery, I’m looking for. It’s a race, Mary, and
the credit of the Service is at stake! No, my dear, I’ll have a snack
when I wake. You’re going shopping?”
“I am, Dan. I’d ha’ started, but I wanted to see ye when ye came hame.
If ye’ve only three hours go straight up the now. I’ll ha’ something
hot a’ ready when ye waken.”
Ten minutes later Kerry was in bed, his short clay pipe between his
teeth, and _The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_ in his hand. Such was
his customary sleeping-draught, and it had never been known to fail.
Half a pipe of Irish twist and three pages of the sad imperial author
invariably plunged Chief Inspector Kerry into healthy slumber.