He went off to his study, found Rockley Payne’s telephone number, and within a minute was talking to that young man, who in his usual eager way expressed his anxiety to help.
“For one thing,” said Mr. Tuke, “I’m trying to track down a quotation.”
“Verse or prose?”
“It is in verse form, anyway.”
The couplet was once more repeated, and Mr. Payne could be heard muttering it over to himself.
“No,” he said. “I can’t place it. Sorry.”
“Could it be Wordsworth?”
“It might be. I’ll tell you what I can do, Mr. Tuke. I’ll try it on the office tomorrow. Both offices—The Ludgate and the M.O.I. The ministry’s full of bards, you know.”
“It’s very good of you. There’s really no hurry. It’s merely an interesting little pointer.”
“Are we,” inquired Mr. Payne, “still on the case, by any chance?”
“We are. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow—that is, if you are coming to Miss Ardmore’s party. My wife and I have been invited.”
“Oh, good. Yes, I shall be there, also complete with wife, if mine can claw her way out of her ministry in time. She’s in Economic Warfare. All God’s chillun got ministries.”
“One other question,” said Harvey. “Raymond Shearsby seems to have had a friend at Cambridge. Did he happen to mention him to you? The man’s name, or anything?”
“He did mention some chap there,” the editor of The Ludgate replied. “A writer on economics. But his name— all I can remember is that it was something like a county. Cheshire, or Sussex, something of the sort. Shearsby met him in France.”
“Many thanks. We creep on. I suppose nothing else that is likely to be of any use has come back to you? Remarks by Shearsby about Dresser, or his other cousins?”
“Not a thing, I’m afraid,” said Rockley Payne regretfully. “I never heard of his cousins till that last visit of his, as I told you. Then he didn’t mention any names. It was news to me that Miss Ardmore was one of them. I’d met her once or twice with Charles Gartside, but Charles only told me who she was that day we met you at her place.”
Mr. Tuke thanked him for his co-operation and returned to the drawing-room. There he found his wife looking slightly perplexed, and Sir Bruton, his spectacles on his nose, waving Miss Ardmore’s card of invitation.
“I was saying,” said the Director, “you can always bring a guest to these informal do’s. What about me?”
“I like your nerve,” said Mr. Tuke.
“ You can’t talk. Wild horses wouldn’t keep you away. And I’m interested in the case, aren’t I? My office seems to be running it, don’t it? Or you are. Wray says so, and he ought to know. Fact is,” said Sir Bruton plaintively to Mrs. Tuke, “I never do see the people in the cases I have to vet. I sit at a thumping great desk all day, saying what’s to be done with ’em, but I don’t even know what they look like. Blind justice, that’s me. Not the Bench. Though God knows it’s blind enough sometimes. Anyhow, I call it tough on an old man. Now here’s a chance. I’d like to go to this party.” Mrs. Tuke was still looking a little dubious.
“I am sure Miss Ardmore would be pleased——”
“Besides,” said Sir Bruton in a wheedling manner, “the poor gal wants her party to go, don’t she? Tuke and me are as good as a knock-about turn. We’ll make it hum.”
Harvey was grinning sardonically. “I think it’s a fair tit for tat,” he said. “Obviously Miss Ardmore is not entirely disinterested. She’s hoping for some pickings.”
Mrs. Tuke shrugged. “I will telephone to her again.”
“Only thing is,” said Sir Bruton, waving the card, “I haven’t got any gay clothes. What does the gal mean? Fancy dress?”
“Don’t worry if it is,” Mr. Tuke adjured him. “Just be yourself.”
PART
FOUR
:
RESULT
CHAPTER XXI
A LITTLE before mid-day on the following morning Mr. Tuke turned under the massive granite gateway of New Scotland Yard and made his way to the Assistant Commissioner’s room. Wray gave him one of his foxy smiles, and reached for a telephone.
“Ask Inspector Vance to come up.” He took a cigarette and turned to his visitor, now extending himself in a chair, cigar-case in hand. “Glad to see you for once, Tuke.”
“What have I done to deserve this?”
“That’s what I want to know. I’ve seen a short report on your proceedings yesterday. I want the whole story, please. Vance will be equally interested. He’s upset about this bicycle. Feels he ought to have thought of it himself. This Sergeant Webley seems a cut above the ordinary country bobby.”
“He is. He ought to be promoted.”
“Your spotting that car was a useful piece of work, too. Though pure luck, of course.”
“Plus observation. What a pity it is, Wray, that there’s such a disparaging streak in you.”
“I’m always trying to damp down your conceit.”
Upon this mild bickering Inspector Vance entered. He was a man of forty-five, his fair hair thinning and a once athletic form beginning to suggest that amplitude more befitting superintendents. His perfectly wooden face concealed dark suspicions of Mr. Tuke, for while the latter was on excellent terms with many of the senior officers of the C.I.D., to some of their subordinates he was the fiend in human form who rent to tatters, with vitriolic comments, cases upon which they had lavished all their care and skill for weeks. Sir Bruton Karnes, though he appended his illegible signature to criticisms with which he entirely agreed, roused none of these feelings. He was considered a good-heafted old boy, unfortunately clay in the hands of his legal assistants, particularly Mr. Tuke. This popular travesty of the facts was well known to the
