Before Dover could utter a word an enormous, vicious-looking and extremely damp Alsatian dog climbed on to the seat beside him.
‘What the blazes!’ exploded Dover. ‘Here, get it out of here!’
‘Don’t push her, sir! She can’t stand being … Well, I did warn you, sir.’
Sukey, Wallerton’s one and only police dog, was almost as fat and lazy as Dover himself, and even more bad-tempered. Even in her prime she had seen her role as more ornamental than useful. Now that she was approaching retirement it was as much as her handler could do to get her to pose for the photographers before retreating to her warm kennel and leaving the master race to get on with the work.
When Dover tried to push her out of the car, she resented it. Dover found himself pinned in his corner with Sukey breathing in his face. Her hard brown eyes squinted malevolently and she bared her yellowing teeth.
It took them seven and a half minutes to extricate Dover from Sukey’s damp and smelly clutches. Her handler exhausted his entire vocabulary of canine commands to no avail. It could have been Greek for all Sukey knew or cared.
Eventually it was the Chief Constable, as befitted his superior rank, who found the solution and cut the Gordian knot. Since Sukey wouldn’t move, Dover would have to. Gingerly the Chief Inspector edged himself out of the car. Sukey was mildly gratified to find that she was now in full possession of the entire back seat.
‘Bloody animal ought to be shot!’ snarled Dover, brushing disconsolately at the muddy paw marks on his coat. ‘If she comes near me again she’ll get the toe of my boot in her guts! I don’t know what people want these damned great dogs for anyhow. I’ve never heard of one of ’em doing anything to earn its keep. We could all get a rise if they didn’t waste their money on those over-fed, pampered brutes.’
‘Chief Inspector Dover!’ The Chief Constable cut ruthlessly into what looked like being a lengthy tirade. ‘May I remind you that Detective Sergeant MacGregor may at this very moment be in great personal danger? And also that a large number of the members of my force have been hanging round in the pouring rain for hours? Some of them are not as young as they used to be and a little consideration, on your part for the inconvenience of others would not be out of place.’
Dover scowled, muttered some inaudible vulgarity under his breath and stumped off resolutely up the nearest flight of steps. It was unfortunate that, once again, it was the wrong house.
When he was at last confronted by the right front door he knocked loudly on it. He rang the bell. He thumped the door. He kicked it.
‘There’s nobody at home,’ said the Chief Constable, man-fully restricting himself to this simple observation.
‘They’re just not answering,’ retorted Dover. ‘ We’ll have to break in. Anybody got an axe?’
The Chief Constable groaned. If this ever got into the papers! ‘There’s a window open at the back. I’ll send somebody in that way.’
Constable Perkins, an eager and innocent young man, agreed to place his future career in jeopardy and volunteered for the job.
‘I won’t forget you, Perkins!’ said the Chief Constable, clapping the lad encouragingly on the shoulders and rapidly planning how to leave the young nit holding the baby should there be any unfortunate repercussions.
Constable Perkins methodically searched the house from attic to cellar. There was a general air of gloom as he made his report. Everybody looked expectantly at Dover.
Dover blew his nose, turned up his coat collar and resettled his bowler hat.
‘Well?’ demanded the Chief Constable.
‘They must have taken him somewhere else,’ said Dover.
‘Where?’
Dover scratched his head. ‘God knows,’ he admitted. ‘What time is it?’ Fourteen assorted policemen consulted their watches and produced fourteen versions of the hour. Dover shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you ask me it’s too late anyhow. We might just as well pack it in now for all the good we’ll do. MacGragor’ll turn up in due course and maybe we can persuade him to prefer charges. After all, he won’t be able to keep what’s happened a secret, not with all us knowing. He might just as well go the whole hog and then we can nab ’ em.’
The Chief Constable could hardly believe his ears. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we just abandon Sergeant MacGregor to his fate and go home to bed?’ he howled.
Dover had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Well,’ he said grudgingly, ‘I suppose we could go on looking if you feel like that about it, but I thought you were worried about your men and the overtime they were knocking up.’
‘Where,’ the Chief Constable said grimly, ‘a man’s, er, health is concerned, I don’t allow trivial considerations of that sort to influence me.’
Dover scratched his head again. He wasn’t much of a one for flogging lost causes but he sensed that the general consensus of opinion was against him. ‘We could try Mrs Jolliott’s,’ he suggested without enthusiasm. ‘They might possibly have taken him there.’
The Chief Constable burst into frenzied activity. Orders were barked out, men rounded up, cars and vans marshalled once more into action. In a remarkably short space of time the whole cavalcade was roaring off to Mrs Jolliott’s house. Sukey still reigned supreme on the back seat of the Chief Constable’s car and, since neither the Chief Constable nor Dover felt up to arguing with her, they crowded into the front with the driver.
Mrs Jolliott’s house was as dark and deserted as Miss ffiske’s had been. The rank and file were looking bewildered and fed up. Most of them hadn’t the remotest idea of what was going on and, very sensibly, stolidly discounted the ridiculous story that Sergeant MacGregor had been kidnapped. In Wallerton? Don’t be daft!
Dover himself was desperately anxious to concede defeat but the Chief Constable, glancing at his watch every two minutes, meanly
