‘I wonder who’s paying the maintenance order for that one?’ he would ask jovially. ‘ Oh, you needn’t look surprised! There’s more born out of wedlock these days than in it, if you ask me. I don’t know what’s got into the younger generation, straight I don’t. Take that young Sergeant MacGregor of mine, for instance. Got the morals of a tom cat, that lad …’
Mrs Cadogan (known in the trade as Pretty Polly) couldn’t understand it – all these cups of coffee completely untouched or with only a mouthful taken out of them. Oh well, she thought philosophically, as she tipped the contents of the cups back into the urn, it helped to keep the overheads down.
Before the week was out MacGregor had acquired a reputation which Don Juan might have envied. (There was more than a soupçon of doubt about the Chief Inspector, too, but that’s beside the point.) As usually happens, the subject of the gossip remained in blissful ignorance of the calumny which was beginning to besmirch his name. MacGregor’s days were spent in dashing hither and thither round the countryside following lines of investigation which would, he was confident, lead him to the men who had mutilated the dead body of the late Mr Hamilton. His nights were spent, at Dover’s insistence, in living it up at the Country Club. The strain was beginning to tell. Dover noted with great satisfaction the increasing signs of exhaustion which were starting to show in MacGregor’s face. The lad was getting to look quite dissipated.
‘I do wish I didn’t have to keep going to that Country Club, sir,’ complained MacGregor one day when he had been granted a brief audience. ‘I really can’t see what good it’s doing. And it’s as dull as ditchwater, too.’
Dover raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a right old sink of iniquity.’
‘I dare say it is, sir, usually. But not when I’m there. They all sit around playing stud poker for matches. All I’m doing is ruining their trade. Why, last night Joey the Jock even offered me fifty quid to stay away from the place. He said I’d bankrupt him if I kept coming much longer.’
‘Fifty quid!’ said Dover with an envious whistle. ‘ You lucky devil!’
‘Naturally I didn’t accept it, sir.’
‘Oh, naturally!’ sniffed Dover. ‘You wouldn’t! Still, if the offer’s open tomorrow night, I should take it.’ ‘You’re not suggesting I should accept a bribe, are you, sir?’
‘It’s not a bribe,’ objected Dover. ‘As long as you take care he doesn’t hand it over in front of witnesses or give you marked notes or anything, you’re as safe as houses. I wish somebody’d offer me fifty quid on a plate like that!’
‘Does this mean that you don’t want me to go to the Country Club after tomorrow night, sir?’
‘Yes, just tonight and tomorrow and then you’re through. Wallerton’s grape vine’s dead efficient, and quick. A day and a half, say; that should be bags of time.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.’
Dover scowled at him. ‘ Hard luck, laddie,’ he said. ‘Still, never mind, you’ll understand all right in good time. Now, what’s today? Wednesday? Right, so you’ll go to that Country Club tonight, see? But on Thursday night you stop in here, in the hotel. Now, my guess is that somebody’ll try and contact you, during the evening probably. They may telephone or they may come round, I dunno. But, whatever they do, you fall in with it, see? They’ll probably want you to leave the hotel so don’t make any bones about it, you just go. Do whatever they want you to.’
MacGregor eyed Dover with a suspicion that was entirely justified. ‘But, where will you be, sir?’
‘Ah,’ said Dover with a happy grin, ‘that’s a good question, laddie. I’ll be around, never you fear.’
‘Is this going to involve me in any, er, danger, sir?’ asked MacGregor dubiously.
‘Don’t be daft!’ said Dover. ‘ Would I do a thing like that to you?’
Chapter Thirteen
MacGregor showed a marked reluctance to leave after this urbane piece of reassurance. He tried, without success, to find out precisely what Dover was up to. His appeals for clarification fell on wilfully deaf ears. It wasn’t often that Dover went to the trouble to work out an elaborate scheme like this and he wasn’t, as he himself put it, going to have it all buggered up at the last minute.
‘But, sir,’ said MacGregor who was getting extraordinarily uneasy about the whole thing, ‘I could play my part much better if I knew what it was all about.’
‘No!’ Dover’s bottom lip jutted out obstinately. ‘I want you to behave naturally.’
‘Look here, sir,’ said MacGregor taking his courage in both hands, ‘I’m not a bit happy about all this. I can’t imagine what good it’s going to do. Now, my own private investigations really are getting somewhere. There’s no doubt about it, Hamilton had been getting mixed up with some very dicey characters, and some that wouldn’t stop at violence, either. Not local layabouts but real full-time villains from all over the place. He’d been backing some pretty nasty, highly organized professional gangs. Now, if he double-crossed them, or they even thought he had, they’d fix him good and proper. And they’d fix Cochran, too. It’s my theory that one of these gangs, and I’ve a jolly good idea which one, got the idea that Hamilton had shopped them over their job. He’d financed them, you see, to the tune of a couple of thousand quid if my information is correct, and of course he knew all the details. Well, the job was a complete flop. The
