Gideon's Night Read online

  Matthew caught his breath, gazing at the newcomer’ as if willing him to say yes.

  “Dullest place in London, this is,” said the plainclothes man, “but I don’t think it’ll be dull everywhere tonight. It’s just the fog the Prowler ordered. All right, Matthew.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir!”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Should’ve introduced you,” Gideon said. “Matt, this is Chief Detective Inspector Whittaker.”

  Whittaker offered his hand, Matthew took it eagerly, and Gideon smiled but was a little uneasy as he went with them to the big hall, and then left them for the lift and his own office, his desk, the reports from the day men, the early reports of the night’s accidents. It was quite dark now, and a lot of bad men were on the prowl …

  Prowl. Words came in spasms, sometimes, like varieties of crime. Get one report of robbery with violence and three or four were likely to come within a few hours. Hear of one race-horse-doping job, and there’d be a crop of them. They seemed to go in cycles, like playing with conkers, bowling hoops, spinning tops, tossing the yoyo and the roller-skating. A week or so would pass without a smash-and-grab job, and there would behalf a dozen on the same day. At the Yard, and particularly in his job, you accepted the inevitability of crime which never stopped; you could never really get on top of it.

  But you could stop some aspects of it, and usually you could catch a particular man if you really went all out. That was why he had chosen tonight to come on duty. The morning weather forecast had been “smoke and fog in towns and industrial areas tonight, clearing toward morning,” and he wanted to know a lot more than he did about the Prowler, who always spread his terror on a foggy night.

  2 The First Reports

  The Yard was strange and even a little eerie by night, especially if you didn’t come after dark very often. Now it was at its worst: dead, flat, drab, almost dreary. Young Matt had dreams of romance and adventure and there could be a little of both; a needle of romance and a pin of adventure in a haystack of routine and crime. Never mind young Matt. The passages of the C.I.D. buildings were fairly wide, and the cement of the floor and the walls seemed new - and also harsh and cold. The whole place struck cold, if it came to that. Doors were closed, and none opened, no one came walking along briskly, full of the next task to be done. The administrative staff was out and away, at home, the pictures, the theatre, clubs, with girl of boy friend, mistress or wife, so the Yard -was empty but for one or two key people, except in the C.I.D. section.

  A door opened, brighter light shone into the dingy light of the passage, and a stocky man appeared, bustling, a sheaf of papers in his hand. This was an Inspector from Records. He wore pince-nez.

  “Hello, George,” he said. “You on tonight?”

  “Yes, Syd, got to make sure I don’t slip.”

  “You slipped as far as you ever will years ago,” said Syd dryly. “Looks as if you’ve picked a good one.’’ He fell into step as they walked toward Gideon’s office. The Records man was half a head shorter than Gideon, going bald where Gideon had a lot of thick, wiry grey hair.

  “What’s on?”

  “What isn’t?” Syd asked. “Lemaitre will tell you. He’s waiting, and - mind if I have a word in your ear?”

  “Nothing’s ever stopped you yet.”

  Syd grinned, but spoke seriously.

  “Don’t keep Lemaitre any longer than you can help tonight. He’s having another basinful of wife trouble. And if you can keep your other ear open while I whisper in that, too, if you want to keep Lem from going crazy, persuade him to walk out on his Fifi. She gets worse and he gets - well, the truth is any man who marries the lush and sexy type ought not to be surprised if he runs into trouble.”

  They stopped outside Gideon’s brown door, which had the word COMMANDER printed on it, in black. Gideon had his back to the door and looked down at the Chief Inspector of Records.

  “Got any facts?”

  “You’ve got eyes.”

  “Any real reason to think it’s any worse than it was, Syd?” Gideon asked in a quiet but insistent tone.

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” said Syd. “I was out in KI Division this afternoon, where Lem lives. The boys know all about Fifi and her goings on, and of late she’s had one or two boy friends who didn’t kiss good night on the right side of the door. Lemaitre got home early one night and saw one of these gentry leaving. There was a mother and father of a row. One of the local coppers heard it. That was a week ago - all’s been quiet and peaceful since then, but if Fifi breaks out again …” Syd-paused, and frowned. “Don’t tell me that you hadn’t noticed anything wrong with Lem. He isn’t that good at fooling you.”

  “I knew there was something wrong,” said Gideon,” but I couldn’t get anything out of him. Thanks, Syd.”

  “Okay, Gee-Gee!”

  The Records man went on, and Gideon opened the door of his office. It was like opening a door into a steam oven. The “steam” was cigarette smoke, which was thick and pale, and the heat came from radiators which had spasms of working as if made exclusively for the Arctic, and at other times were barely warm.

  At one end of the long room with windows overlooking the Embankment, Chief Inspector Lemaitre sat back in a chair, halfway through a cigarette, and a sergeant stood by him, glancing around. The sergeant, dressed in thick brown serge and wearing a collar and tie, looked too hot even to breathe comfortably, and his face was bright red. Lemaitre’s was pale, his eyes were a little glittery, he had his coat off, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and the ends of his yellow-and-black tie hung from a collar which had been wrenched from its stud.

  “Hello,” said Gideon. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Good evening, sir.” That was the sergeant.

  “S’all right,” said Lemaitre gruffly. “It doesn’t matter to me whether I get home tonight.” That was an effort to be funny and it failed completely. “What’s the fog like?”

  “Nothing much, yet.”

  “Going to be just about right for the Prowler,” Lemaitre remarked. “You take it from me, George, one of these days the Prowler’s going to leave a corpse behind, not just a girl who’s scared stiff and got a nasty memory. Seven times is too many times to get away with it.” He stood up as Gideon went to his larger desk which was at the other end of the room. Gideon took off his coat and draped it over the back of his chair, then took a pipe out of his pocket. It had a very large bowl, and was rough on the outside; knobbly, too. He began to fill it slowly from a brown leather pouch.

  “Tell you another thing,” Lemaitre went on, while the sergeant stood and waited for instructions. “You’re going to have one hell of a night. Never known so much to come in between six and seven o’clock. Having a bit of a lull now, but that won’t last for long. What do you want first, the day’s stuff or what’s doing at the moment?”

  “We got any leads?”

  “Not really.”

  “Give me the day’s stuff, will you?” Gideon said.” Sergeant, pull up a chair and make notes when I tell you to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, bring up a chair for Mr. Lemaitre.”

  “Rather stand, ta,” said Lemaitre, and in fact sat on the corner of Gideon’s big, shiny desk. Several piles of paper stood on this, with three telephones, two ash trays, pen and ink, a blotting pad and several reference books, including Whitaker’s Almanack. “Here it comes. Only two big jobs last night which kept us on the go this morning: murder of that old woman out at Ealing, and her missing lodger. He was picked up at Hammersmith and made a statement, all the usual stuff, he didn’t mean to do it. I’d string him up without a trial if I had my way.”

  That kind of remark, made in front of a sergeant, was a clear indication of Lemaitre’s frame of mind.

  “The other job was the Milden Street jewel robbery, fifteen thousand quid’s worth of stuff lifted, without a trace. We had every fence we know questioned today and haven’t got a smell of the stuff. We don’t even know who
did the job. It had none of the usual trademarks; it was just neat and tidy and anonymous. There are the hangovers, too. Then …”

  Lemaitre talked for ten minutes, touching upon dozens of different crimes, all of them large and important enough to have been brought to the Yard’s notice, ranging from pocket picking to shoplifting, smash-and-grab to soliciting, fraud, embezzlement, attempted suicide, and causing grievous bodily harm - a kind of everyday’s charge list which might have been lifted out of any issue of the Police Gazette. Lemaitre added odds and ends of information which were in the official report, one of the piles of papers on Gideon’s desk. He smoked all the time, lighting one cigarette from the butt of another. Now and again Gideon signalled to the sergeant to make notes; otherwise he didn’t interrupt. And he didn’t light his pipe.

  Lemaitre paused. Then:

  “That’s about the lot,” he declared. “Shouldn’t think it will break any records.”

  “What’s this business of a Mrs. Penn who rang up three times to say she was worried about her husband because he hasn’t been home for several weeks?”

  “AB Division job,” Lemaitre said. “Shouldn’t think there’s anything much in it; they sent a man round to talk to her. She’s only been married a year or so, and just can’t bear to think that her husband got tired of her and walked out so soon. But that’s what he did all right, although she can’t bring herself to believe it.”

  “Didn’t you say she said she thought he must be dead?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “She give any reason?”

  “If you ask me, she’s right out of reason,” Lemaitre opined. His one fault was his habit of jumping to conclusions; nothing seemed able to cure him. Before he could go on one of the telephones on Gideon’s desk began to ring. Lemaitre looked at it with disgust, squashed out a cigarette and immediately began to light another; the tips of his forefinger and middle finger were so brown that they looked almost black. His eyes were tired, bloodshot and a little watery.

  Gideon lifted up the receiver.

  “Gideon,” he said into it. “Who … Oh, yes, put him through.” He covered the mouthpiece with his broad hand and said to the others. “AB Division.”

  “Perhaps hubby’s come home,” Lemaitre said sneeringly.

  The truth about Lemaitre was that he needed a rest; somewhere quiet, somewhere on his own or with a wife who would fuss over him a little; and he wanted to be free from anxiety. And the truth about Lemaitre was that he’d married a bitch and, in spite of it, had never really fallen out of love with her. Lemaitre had failings but normally he was a sound man; now, he wasn’t seeing anything straight because he was picturing his wife in another man’s arms.

  This was the first time Gideon had been really worried about him; he would have been, even without the Records man’s comment.

  A man came on the line.

  “Gee-Gee? Elliott here. Just had a job which looks as if it could become nasty. Thought you’d better know at once. Kid disappeared from his home, Trenton Street, Chelsea. Four months old. Her mother left the baby in the kitchen while she talked to someone in the front room, and when she came back the kid was gone. Hell of a job.”

  “Any history?”

  “That’s all we know, yet.”

  “I’ll put you through to Morley - he’ll take all details - and I’ll have a call out for the baby as soon as we can put it on the air and the teletype,” Gideon promised. “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything more about a Mrs. Penn and her missing husband?”

  “Just another poor kid with a husband who thinks he’s Don Juan,” said Elliott, and he wasn’t prone to jumping to conclusions.

  “Sure?”

  “As near as I can be. Why?”

  “I was looking through some reports on her yesterday,” said Gideon, “and she seemed pretty level-headed, not really the type to bury her head in the sand. Lem doesn’t agree with me, but …”

  “If she comes through again, I’ll try to see her myself,” Elliott promised.

  “Thanks,” said Gideon. “Now I’ll put you through to Morley.”

  That only took a moment.

  Next, he called the Information Room, told them about the missing baby and had them flash radio calls to all patrol cars. Soon the teletypes would be busy, all the Metropolitan Police and many in the Homes Counties would be on the lookout, for the one thing which always gave that little extra inducement to effort was the search for a missing child.

  Gideon rang off, and another telephone rang promptly.

  “Here we go,” Lemaitre said, almost savagely. “Why don’t they give us another pair of hands and ears?”

  “Hello, Gideon here,” said Gideon. “Yes, put him through … Hello, Mike … I haven’t been in long but I gather they picked up the lodger, a man named Grey… Dunno how long he’s lodged there, why?… Oh …oh. Yes, I’ll see to it.” He put down the receiver and motioned to the sergeant. “Take this down: Arthur Grey, suspect in the murder of Mrs. Sarah Allway of Giddons Road, Ealing, answers the description of a man calling himself Arthur Smith who disappeared from a house in Clapham three weeks ago after leaving his landlady for dead. Make a note that we want all details, and then telephone Hammersmith. Grey’s still held there, isn’t he?”

  “No. Cannon Row,” Lemaitre said shortly.

  “Might be able to do it myself then,” Gideon said. For the first time he lit his pipe, taking his time over it. It was cooler in the office, but just as smoky, and there was an acrid smell - the smell of smog - which rose above the smell of the tobacco. He nodded to the sergeant, who hurried out to type his notes so that Gideon could have them in front of him and copies could be sent out to other Departments and the Divisions. The smell, the smoke, the sight of Lemaitre’s pale face and glassy eyes and the set of Lemaitre’s lips did nothing to cheer Gideon up. When he had come into the office first Lemaitre and then the Prowler had been on top of his mind, but already there were signs that it might be a very bad night in a lot of ways.

  A kidnapped infant, for a start.

  A middle-aged man who lodged with elderly women and then attacked them.

  Out in the dark city, within a radius of ten miles of this point, there were the. professional criminals waiting to take their chance, there were people who had never committed a crime committing one now, there were the pros out in their hundreds, there was vice so thick that it stank, there was everything that would duly take its place in the crime statistics of the year; and there was Kate, the family - and young Matthew, probably still downstairs here with his eyes glistening, and Whittaker already so busy that he was wishing that he’d never set eyes on the boy.

  There was the Prowler.

  And Lemaitre.

  For a few minutes the telephones were silent. Cars hooted outside as drivers became impatient with the fog and on Charing Cross Bridge a train rumbled and a fog signal exploded with its mournful note of warning; the fog was really thick over the river.

  Here, Lemaitre stood by his own desk shrugging himself into his coat.

  “Lem, how are things at home?” Gideon asked, right out of the blue.

  “Things at home are so good that one of these days you’ll be charging me with murder,” Lemaitre said. He forced a grin, fastened his collar and tie, and straightened his coat. His eyes were dark with shadows, his cheeks very lean; he had a bony chin. “Oh, forget it. Never has been a bed of roses - never been much bed at all, if you know what I mean! But there’s no need for you to worry, George. Anything else I can do, before I go?”

  “What do you expect to find when you get home?”

  “A cold supper and an empty fireplace,” said Lemaitre abruptly, “unless she’s staying in because of the fog. She’s taken to suspecting every man who looks at her on a foggy night as the Prowler. If she’s home she’ll tell me just what she thinks of me for leaving her all alone - oh, forget it, I said.” But Lemaitre’s smile was much too set. “Could get ho
me and find her as sweet as honey, too. Sure there’s nothing else?”

  “No. Lem, thanks.”

  “See you the day after tomorrow, then,” Lemaitre said. “So long.”

  Gideon said good night, Lemaitre went out, and the door closed behind him. It wouldn’t be long before the night-duty inspector who would share the vigil with Gideon came back, but for a little while he had the office on his own. He lifted the receiver, put in a call to K.I Division and, while he was waiting for it to come through, looked through the reports. Lemaitre had summarized them almost perfectly.

  “Want me, Gee-Gee?” said the KI Divisional man.

  “Oh, hello, yes.” Gideon was so mild that he sounded almost uninterested. “Lemaitre’s just left for home. Have a man on his street when he gets there, will you, and have someone find an excuse for calling on him in half an hour or so after he arrives.”

  “Sure,” the Divisional man said, with complete understanding. “Any hews about that baby?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. If you don’t find ‘em quick you often don’t find ‘em at all, except in the river or under a foot of earth,” the KI man observed; he was being factual, not callous. “Well, I’ll fix that job in Lemaitre’s street, and then see what’s doing tonight. I hope the Prowler doesn’t play any tricks on my beat.”

  “Let me know if he does,” said Gideon dryly.

  As he rang off, he warned himself ruefully that the Prowler was on top of everyone’s mind. One reason was that no one was allowed to forget him. The evening newspapers had a paragraph about him whenever there was fog and there’d been a front-page story in tonight’s Evening Globe, not much but just enough. It had repeated that the police had not yet caught the man known as the Prowler who, on foggy nights, would lie in wait for young girls, in the porches and the front doorways of their own homes, springing out on them, throttling them to silence and …

  That was anyone’s guess. The Evening Globe also pointed out, as if more in sorrow than in anger, that two things were known about the Prowler. He had once left a handkerchief of very good quality at the scene of an attack, and each girl who had seen him had talked of a “big shiny face”; presumably a mask of some kind. Neither of these clues had helped the police, nor had the descriptions of the Prowler given by the girls, one had said “big and powerful,” another had said “smallish” and several had plumped for “average size” Even ordinary witnesses to the same incident gave-widely differing descriptions, and these girls had been cold with fear. But that didn’t help.