‘Are you going to buy us a drink, dearie?’ asked the blonde Chick, slipping a befeathered arm round Dover’s neck and ruining what could have been a beautiful friendship, by her thoughtless question.
‘Hop it!’ said Dover bluntly.
MacGregor unwound his Chick, a brunette with greedy eyes and clutching hands, and tried to push her away.
But the Chicks had their living to earn and knew only too well that maidenly modesty got you nowhere. They settled themselves down resolutely, smoothed their feathers and reiterated their demands for liquid refreshment. The blonde Chick even took a sip out of Dover’s glass to show that she was serious.
‘Ooh!’ she chirped. ‘That’s a drop of the real stuff! We’ll have four more just like that, Ernie!’
The waiter, who had materialized out of the darkness said, ‘Very good, sir!’ and scuttled away before Dover could, stop him.
MacGregor, sensing that he was going to get the blame for all this, tried to reassure his pouting superior. ‘We shan’t get rid of them without buying them a drink, sir.’
‘We shan’t get rid of them by buying them one, either,’ retorted Dover sourly as the waiter appeared flourishing a tray with four glasses on it.
‘Thirty-seven and six, sir,’ he said calmly as he put the drinks down on the table.
Dover came within an inch of breaking a blood vessel. ‘ What is it?’ he spluttered. ‘Molten gold?’
‘We call ’em the Kiss of Death, sir. One of our specialities.’
MacGregor reached resignedly for his wallet, but the Chief Inspector stopped him.
‘They’re on the house,’ he said. ‘We’re guests of the manager.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said the waiter, beginning to get nasty. ‘Thirty-seven and six, service not included.’
‘We can’t buy drinks,’ Dover pointedly out triumphantly. ‘We’re not members. It’s against the law.’
Silently the waiter fished in his pocket and produced two small, plastic-covered cards. He placed them carefully on the table. ‘You’ve been made honorary members, sir. Compliments of the management. Thirty-seven and six.’
Stupefied, Dover accepted defeat and permitted MacGregor to settle their account.
The two Fluffy Chicks had watched the proceedings with interest.
‘Drink up, Syb,’ said the blonde one who now realized she had made a bad mistake in choosing Dover. ‘ There’s no more where this one came from. I don’t know where the real gentlemen have got to these days, honest I don’t.’
The brunette Chick was not quite so pessimistic. She, after all, had got the dashing MacGregor who was beginning to repulse her advances with diminishing vigour. If only they could get rid of that fat old devil, and the blonde Chick, the whole evening might not yet be lost. ‘You’ve got lovely eyes, dearie,’ she said, nearly gouging one out with the artificial beak perched on top of her head as she advanced her face to the sergeant’s. ‘Did anybody ever tell you you’ve got lovely eyes?’
MacGregor lowered them bashfully to the table, Dover’s presence inhibiting an otherwise rather polished technique.
‘Ain’t he got lovely eyes, Peg?’ demanded the brunette Chick, feeling that her opening gambit was too good to abandon.
‘Smashin’,’ agreed her companion, busily trying to extract a quill which was piercing painfully through her down-covered brassiere.
‘D’you know,’ said the brunette Chick thoughtfully, ‘he’s got eyes just like Chauncey, when you come to look at ’em close.’
‘Oh, Chauncey!’ said the blonde Chick in disparaging tones.
This idle remark evidently re-festered an old sore. The brunette Chick grew quite annoyed. ‘ Yes, Chauncey!’ she repeated, sitting very upright and fluffing out her feathers. ‘And what’s wrong with Chauncey, may I ask?’
‘Oh, nothing! ’Cept he seems to have had the good taste to drop you like a hot brick.’
‘You mangy old cat! Just because he’s not been in for a night or two, there’s no call for you to go venting your spite.’
‘Just a night or two!’ The blonde Chick let fly with a raucous shriek of laughter. ‘He’s not been in for months and well you know it! That’s what comes of trying to keep a fellow all to yourself, dearie. He gets dead bored with you!’
The brunette Chick, predictably, refuted this unkind observation and proceeded to counter-attack with a few barbed criticisms concerning a certain Charlie. Before long both ladies were swopping insults with gusto and imagination.
MacGregor switched off completely and passed the time thinking his own dark thoughts, but in the recesses of Dover’s mind a nebulous something had been nudged into wakefulness. In a lesser man, or in a lesser detective, the matter might have been ignored and the hazy memory that the name Chauncey had been heard before would have been allowed to sink back into the morass. But Chief Inspector Dover, for motives which remain obscure but were certainly inspired, decided to pursue the problem.
He interrupted the Chicks. ‘Who’s Chauncey?’ he demanded.
The Chicks, who had left Chauncey a good five minutes altercation behind, gaped at him open-beaked.
‘Chauncey?’ repeated the brunette Chick, suddenly on her guard. ‘Chauncey? Oh, he’s a chap I know. One of the members, as a matter of fact.’ She exchanged a warning glance with the blonde Chick and, tossing off the remains of their drinks, they both prepared to take their leave.
‘Sit down!’ growled Dover, his mind rootling away to unearth where he had heard the name Chauncey before. ‘Is Chauncey his Christian name?’
The brunette Chick nodded.
‘What’s his surname?’
The brunette Chick smiled brightly. ‘I’m afraid I’m not allowed to tell members the name of other members. You’ll have to ask the manager.’
‘I’m asking you,’ said Dover heavily and menacingly. ‘ Don’t start trying to make things difficult for yourself.’
‘Oh, tell him, for gawd’s sake!’ advised the blonde Chick who had a wide experience of policemen turning nasty on you.
‘Why don’t you tell him?’ her friend asked. ‘You know his name as well as I do.’
‘Because he wasn’t my fancy man, that’s why!’ the blonde Chick retorted haughtily, preening a feather or two on her scanty costume.
‘Come on!’ said Dover in a
