Miss Gourlay clutched Miss ffiske.
Dover addressed Miss ffiske fearfully. ‘I sincerely hope, madam, that he made no improper advances towards you?’
‘I should like to see him try!’ said Miss ffiske stoutly. ‘He just came …’
‘Or to you, madam?’
Miss Gourlay, wide-eyed, cowered further behind her friend and shook her head.
‘Thank God!’ said Dover piously. ‘Thank God!’
‘Good grief,’ said Miss ffiske, trying to bring the conversation back to a terrestrial level, ‘you’re going on as though the man’s a sexual maniac.’
‘But he is, madam, he is! You don’t know how lucky you’ve been.’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Miss ffiske with a remarkable show of common sense, ‘what’s he doing in the police force?’
Dover scowled at her irritably. ‘ Because we can’t catch him at it, that’s why!’ he snapped.
‘Well, I must say, he looked a perfectly nice, respectable young man to me.’
‘He would! That’s part of his technique. You’d be surprised at how many innocent young girls he’s lured to their doom that way.’
‘Well, he didn’t try to lure me.’
Be a brave man who did, thought Dover grumpily. ‘ I suggest, madam,’ he said aloud, ‘that if he comes hanging around you again you get in touch with me without delay.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary, thank you very much!’ was Miss ffiske’s tart rejoinder. ‘I can assure you that I am more than competent to deal with that sort of thing. And, should I have any complaints to make about Sergeant MacGregor’s behaviour, I shall make them at a considerably higher level than yours.’
‘Suit yourself!’ mumbled Dover crossly. ‘ But just don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all.’
‘If I am raped by a detective sergeant from Scotland Yard under your command, you will have to face more than reproaches!’ said Miss ffiske sourly. ‘Now, Janie, I’m going out on my rounds. You’d better lock the door behind me and put the chain on. Just in case.’
Dover, not being left much choice, took his leave. He was not unsatisfied with his performance. In fact, he was rather pleased with it. He didn’t get much opportunity of playing character parts so that, when he did, he flung himself in to it heart and souL He congratulated himself unreservedly as he made his way back to the hotel. The seeds had been sown. The trap had been baited. The hook had been dangled. All that remained now was for the master mind to take things easy and let the insidious poison of suspicion do its work.
There are few people who can hold a candle to Chief Inspector Dover when it comes to taking things easy, though it must not be assumed that he did absolutely nothing to further his case in the ensuing twenty-four hours. On the very next morning he received the police surgeon in his hotel bedroom and was closeted with that bewildered gentleman for an hour and a half. Professional secrecy has thrown an impenetrable veil over the proceedings but it can be surmised that Dover’s stomach, corns and sore toe were not the exclusive topics of discussion. Dover wanted information, and the police surgeon, unworthily wondering from time to time if he was dealing with a particularly nasty type of obsessional neurotic, provided what answers he could. He pointed out rather stiffly to the Chief Inspector that this was not a matter which cropped up frequently in a respectable practice, not even in one which also embraced the local police force.
When the doctor, sworn to secrecy, had gone, Dover permitted himself a rich chuckle of congratulation. He was more firmly convinced than ever that he was on the right lines. As was his wont, once he had made up his mind, very little, and certainly not contrary facts and contradictory evidence, could induce him to change it. MacGregor had frequently lamented this in the past. On this particular occasion, however, MacGregor was not going to be informed that Dover had all but solved the case. In the next few days whenever Dover saw his sergeant he listened attentively to that young man’s elaborate reports of the trails he was following, and said nothing of his own astonishing deductions. MacGregor might have been forgiven for thinking, as he did, that Dover was indulging even more luxuriously than usual in his favourite pastime of putting his feet up. But MacGregor would have been wrong.
As the days passed and as the fancy took him Dover sallied forth from time to time into the highways and by-ways of Wallerton to add a finishing touch or two. These finishing touches were added with a certain ham-fistedness, but then delicacy was never one of Dover’s strong points.
His usual technique was to roam the streets of Wallerton in search of ladies who were members of the Ladies’ League. Dover’s eyesight was not as good as it had been. The weather was nearly always inclement and plastic macs are not as transparent as all that. His habit of approaching close to middle-aged ladies and staring fixedly at their bosoms did not pass unnoticed. Some ladies, not sporting the blue ribbon for which he searched, were even more distressed when, having examined them in vain, the Chief Inspector uttered a disgusted ‘’Strewth!’ and hurried away.
Not that things were much better when he did spy his prey. He was then faced with the problem of engaging them in conversation. The respectable matrons of Wallerton were horrified to find themselves accosted by a large, fat and uncouth lout who, perhaps standing beside a shop window display of lingerie would address them with some such remark as ‘I’m surprised some of these young girls don’t catch their death wearing flimsy things like that, aren’t you? Ah, but that’s the younger generation all over. I don’t know what they’re coming to these days, straight I don’t. Take that young Sergeant MacGregor of mine, for instance. Got the morals of a randy bull, that lad …’
Sometimes he rested his feet in a
