Gideon's Night

  Copyright & Information

  Gideon’s Night

  First published in 1957

  Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1957-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  075511406X 9780755114061 Print

  0755126300 9780755126309 Pdf

  0755118650 9780755118656 Mobi/Kindle

  0755126335 9780755126330 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasy wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  1 Night’s Beginning

  In the early, misty dusk, Gideon stepped out of his house and closed the door on brightness and music. It was not yet six o’clock. His family, except Matthew, who was out, would spend the evening gathered round the fire, the television, lesson books and, if Prudence could make the others sit back for half an hour, her violin. It, was a happy family, happier today than it had been a few years ago, when he and Kate had drawn apart; and he was thinking about that. For when he had kissed Kate good-by she had held him tightly for a moment, not wanting him to go out into London’s night. At one time she simply had not cared and neither had he. Now they were man and wife if ever two people were - and at this moment Kate was back in the living room, exerting her firm but often unsuspected control over the family.

  It was chilly.

  Gideon shrugged his big body inside the thick grey overcoat, a massive man with slightly rounded shoulders, a fine head, rather heavy features. He had a slow, deliberate walk, because he had trained himself not to hurry except in emergency, and he was in good time. On the nights which he was going to spend in his office at the Yard, or out and about on the Yard’s business, he liked to arrive fairly early. Lemaitre and other daytime-duty men would wait to brief him with the day’s happenings, and he did not want to keep them too late.

  He walked toward his garage, round the corner.

  This was Hurlingham, part of the London suburb of Fulham, where he had lived most of his life and all ofhis marriage, yet the night scene had freshness: the haloes round the street lamps, the lights at windows where neighbours lived with their troubles and their problems - and where, only a few weeks ago, a regular patron of the magistrates’ courts had broken in, by night, and got away with three hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery.

  Gideon, Commander George Gideon of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police, hadn’t yet lived that down. He smiled dryly at the thought now. The thief was in jail, most of the jewellery had been recovered, and the men at the Yard had had their little joke.

  He reached the corner.

  A tall man was just along the street, beyond the garage, and looked as if he had been lounging against the wall and had just straightened up. Suspiciously? The thought was hardly in Gideon’s mind when he recognized the “man” and his smile turned into a grin. This was Matthew, his seventeen-year-old son, thin and spindly although possessed of broad shoulders and big hips; he would fill out, but at the moment could hardly be more awkward or cumbersome. He was the ugly duckling, anyhow, with plain features and invariably untidy hair, but the greatest cause for worry was about his future. He was clever, almost brilliant in his studies, but had always been vague about what he wanted to do. He seemed to think that the world would fall into his lap.

  Obviously he had been waiting here, so he had something to say to his father that he didn’t want to saying front of his mother.

  “Hello, Matt, just coming home?”

  “Evening, Dad. Yes, I - I was kept in this afternoon. I’m a bit late.”

  “Feel sorry for you young hopefuls sometimes,” said Gideon, in a tone which obviously had Matthew guessing; was this sincere or was it parental sarcasm? “In my young days school finished about four o’clock, and we had an hour’s homework to do, if we had the sense to do it.” Gideon was unlocking the big green doors of the garage, and Matthew stood ready to push the sliding doors to one side.

  “I know,” he said quietly and hurriedly. “I’m just about fed up with school. They don’t really teach you anything worth while. What the dickens is the use of learning about algebraic problems and logarithms and Greek gods? Why, there are times when …”

  He pushed the door and it ran easily on the runners; a sharp noise as it banged against the stop cut off his last words.

  “I mean, do you know anything about Greek gods?” he demanded hotly.

  “Not much,” conceded Gideon. “It takes me all my time to sort out what’s true of one.” He was troubled, because he was coming to the opinion that Matthew simply didn’t like work, and, if Gideon had a hate, it was of laziness. But nothing of this sounded in his voice as he went on: “Lend a hand with the car, will you?”

  There was no room to open the door and get to the wheel while the car was in the garage, which was too narrow for it to be backed inside with any safety. So it had to be pulled by the bumper until the door was clear. At one time that had been a nuisance but now it was almost second nature; garages weren’t easy; to come by in London.

  They pulled.

  “Dad, must I stay until I’m eighteen?” Matthew burst out. “Why can’t I leave at the end of this term? There’s no law to make me stay, fifteen’s the legal leaving age, and even if I did win a scholarship to a university, what use is it to me? It isn’t as if I wanted to be a professor or a mathematician or - or …”

  “A student of Greek mythology,” Gideon completed for him. “Nip in the other side, while I get the car off the pavement.” He got into the Wolseley and
switched on the ignition, while Matthew scrambled in the other side as eagerly as he had when he had been a child. Gideon started the engine and reversed slowly. He seldom talked while he was reversing, or driving in traffic, and Matthew knew better than to expect conversation. He pulled in to the curb. “When’s your mother expecting you home?”

  “Oh, I’m late, but she won’t worry how much …”

  “You’d be surprised how much she might worry,” said Gideon. “You’d better pop in and tell her you’re back and that you’re coming with me for the drive.”

  “Oh, fine!” breathed Matthew.

  Two minutes later, the front door closed on Penelope, the youngest girl, and Matthew came hurrying back. He slammed the car door, and settled down.

  “Dad, I thought you’d understand. I’m tired of school. I want to get a job and start earning some money, instead of sponging on you all the time. Tom left school at fifteen and he’s done well for himself, hasn’t he? I know he’s much older than I am but - well, he’s actually going to get married. He must be earning a whopping big screw. If I don’t start soon, what chances have I got of succeeding?”

  Tom, Gideon’s oldest son, had lived away from home for several years.

  “I see,” said Gideon, as he drove at fair speed along the narrow street. “Know what you want to do for a living, Matt?”

  “Yes!” The word came out almost defiantly. “I’ve decided.”

  “Hmm.” Gideon managed to his surprise. Now that it had come, he wasn’t sure that he liked the thought of Matthew with his mind made up in such a way that he didn’t want to tell his mother; even defiant because he was sure that he would run into opposition.

  “What’s it to be?” Gideon made himself sound eager.

  Matthew turned to stare at his father. As they passed a street lamp, Gideon took his eye off the road for a moment, so as to glimpse the eager face, the unusually bright eyes, one hand raised and clenched as a measure of the lad’s intensity.

  “I want to be a policeman, a copper. I want to start in the ranks and work my way up, just like you did!”

  “Good God!” exclaimed Gideon.

  “I know Mum won’t like it. I don’t suppose you will either. Mum’s always complaining that she’s never known where you’d be from one moment to the next - why, look at tonight. She hates it when you go out on night duty, and whenever you’re called up in the middle of the night, well, you ought to hear what she says sometimes. I know she’s frightened, but …”

  “Frightened?”

  “Of course she is, especially since that time when you were looking for Sid Benson,” Matthew rushed on.” She just can’t stand it when she thinks you might be in danger, but that’s just like a woman. Women simply can’t understand that a man has to have some adventure. What would life be like if there wasn’t any danger? And after all, you’ve lived to be pretty old, haven’t you?”

  Gideon slowed down at a junction with a main road.

  “I’ll give you old,” he said roundly. “I’m fifty-one, my lad, and fifty-one’s no age. So you really want to start as a copper, you think your mother will hate the idea, and that I’ll tell you to stop talking nonsense. That right?”

  “Well, yes, won’t you?”

  They turned into the main road. It was fairly well lit just here, and there was more traffic, but not enough to be troublesome. Matthew still looked as if nothing but this subject mattered even slightly. Two policemen stood at a corner, and one saluted as Gideon’s car passed, while both of them watched.

  “Well, won’t you?” demanded Matthew.

  “Do you know, Matt, I’m not quite sure,” said Gideon. That was true. “I’m really not sure. In some ways I’d like to feel that one of my boys was coming into the Force. It can be a damned good career. You might be right about your mother, but if you want a thing like this badly enough you’ll have to show her that it really matters to you; then, even if she doesn’t like it, she won’t be unreasonable. But you’ve a lot of time for thinking about it, Matt, and you’ve got a few ideas that won’t do you much good if you want to be a copper. Unless that’s all you want to be,” he added dryly, “a chap pushing a bike around, with a possibility of becoming a sergeant if you’ll wait fifteen years or so.”

  “Of course that’s not what I want! I want to do detective work in the C.I.D., like you. After all, you’re right at the top …”

  “If you forget the Assistant Commissioner for Crime, that’s right,” agreed Gideon, smothering a grin. “But all you can see is where I am, not how I got there and what I learned on the way.” He paused to negotiate three cyclists who were riding abreast, and then swept forward along a nearly empty road leading to the heart of London. Traffic coming out was getting thick. “If you do want to study for the C.I.D., the more you can learn-at school and even the university …”

  “But Dad, what use are …”

  “Greek gods, I know,” said Gideon, and he wasn’t smiling. “The answer is that they might make or break you - certainly they might make you. It’s about seven years since they dug up that statue of Minerva out of the ruins of the Barbican. It had lain under the ground for about fifteen hundred years. Funny thing, coincidence, but about a year afterward a lot of Greek and Roman pottery was found in France, caused quite a stir in archaeological and historical quarters, and some of the stuff was extremely valuable. Soon afterward it was stolen. You should have heard the screams that went up. It so happened that we had a youngish chap at the Yard who’d been interested about the stuff they dug up at the Barbican, and had learned a lot about it. We had a pretty good idea that one of several wealthy collectors had stolen the new discovery, or bought it from the thief. Our chap was able to mix with the suspect collectors, talk their own language, and find the stuff. One of the collectors had bought it, knowing it to be stolen - the thief got five years and the receiver three. That chap’s got a lot to thank his interest in Greek gods for, Matt. He’s a Divisional detective inspector today. If it hadn’t been for that job he would probably be a detective sergeant at the Yard running around and doing what I tell him.”

  Matthew made no immediate response, and Gideon drove more quickly. In less than ten minutes they would be at the Yard, and he was falling behind time. Yet he didn’t want to cut Matthew short.

  Then Matthew said abruptly, “I suppose you really mean that anything a man knows might come in useful in detective work.”

  “Not might, Matt. It’s bound to, sooner, or later. It won’t always be spectacular, but you’ve got to be a jack-of-all-trades, as well as knowing the ropes and routine. Know what detection is, really? It’s patience, persistence, a good memory and a first-class power of observation. You come across some little thing in a case; let’s take something simple like a foreign language. I’ve often heard you saying that you hate French lessons. Well, any Yard man who can speak and read French fluently is a step ahead of another chap who’s just as competent in all other ways. Why? Because every week, sometimes a dozen times a week, we pick up a Frenchman or we have to question a French witness, and it can save a hell of a lot of time and trouble if we can do without an official interpreter. The more you know, Matt, the more chance you’ve got of getting on. Like to know something else? I didn’t know a word of French before I joined the Force, but when I realized how much it might help I spent most of my spare time picking it up. You ought to have heard what your mother said about my nose being stuck in a book!”

  Matthew grinned.

  “I can imagine,” he said slyly. “I think I see what you mean, Dad. General knowledge is very important.”

  “General knowledge is all important,” corrected Gideon, “and all the special training, the routine, the walking the beat and taking your turn at traffic duty won’t help if you haven’t got it. Supposing we had trouble with a musician, for instance - the things that Pru can tell me about music would be as much use as anything else I know.”

  Matthew nodded again and was silent, but that didn’t mean that
he was subdued. They reached Parliament Square, where the yellow face of Big Ben was shrouded in mist, and where the lights of Westminster Bridge were clearly visible at this end, but vague and misty at the middle and beyond.

  “Well, think about it,” said Gideon more briskly. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry. If I were you I’d wait a few weeks and then have another talk with me. There’s no point in worrying your mother if it’s going to come to nothing, is there? Now I’ll have to look slippy. Got your fare home?”

  “I - well, I am a bit short,” Matthew said, and grinned. “You couldn’t send me home in a prowl car, could you?”

  “I could not! We don’t have prowl cars; we have Squad cars and patrol cars, and the drivers are too busy to be running infants about.” Gideon turned into the courtyard of Scotland Yard, from the Embankment, and pulled up, stopped the engine, and then took two half crowns from his pocket. “Here you are, and get that nonsense about sponging on me out of your head. What do you think I work for? Lot of use money would be to me if I didn’t have a family to spend it on.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Matthew took the five shillings thoughtfully, and they got out and met at the back of the car. A tall flight of stone steps led up in front of them, and the tall, pale building rose high above their heads. “It’s going to be a nasty night,” Matthew observed casually. “Isn’t this the kind of night that the Prowler gets around?”

  There was a hint of excitement in his voice, after all.

  “It’s just the Prowler’s kind of night, but when you get home you tell your mother there’s hardly a trace of fog,” ordered Gideon. He looked up as a plain-clothes man approached from the Embankment, brisk, heavily built, footsteps very firm. “Hello, Joe,” Gideon greeted. “How about finding time to take my son Matthew down to the Information Room and let him see how it works? He has an idea that a policeman’s life is full of excitement.”