Thompson looked at her a little anxiously. By nature he was inclined to take things for granted, things outside his profession that is.

  "It's a funny old world, Tommikins," she repeated at length, picking up her knife and fork, "funnier for some than for others."

  Thompson looked up with a puzzled expression on his face. There were times when he found Gladys Norman difficult to understand.

  "For a girl, I mean," she added, as if that explained it.

  Thompson still stared. The remark did not strike him as illuminating.

  "It may be," she continued meditatively, "that I like doing things for the Chief because he was my haven of refuge from a wicked world; but that doesn't explain why you and Tims——"

  "Your haven of refuge!" repeated Thompson, making a gulp of a mouthful, and once more laying down his knife and fork, as he looked across at her curiously.

  "Before I went to the Ministry I had one or two rather beastly experiences." She paused as if mentally reviewing some unpleasant incident.

  "Tell me, Gladys." Thompson was now all attention.

  "Well, I once went to see a man in Shaftesbury Avenue who had advertised for a secretary. He was a funny old bean," she added reminiscently, "all eyes and no waist, and more curious as to whether I lived alone, or with my people, than about my speeds. So I told him my brother was a prize-fighter, and——"

  "But you haven't got a brother," broke in Thompson.

  "I told him that for the good of his soul, Tommy, and of the girls who came after me," she added a little grimly.

  "It was funny," she continued after a pause. "He didn't seem a bit eager to engage me after that. Said my speeds (which I hadn't told him) were not good enough; but to show there was no ill-feeling he tried to kiss me at parting. So I boxed his ears, slung his own inkpot at him and came away. Oh! it's a great game, Tommy, played slow," she added as an after-thought, and she hummed a snatch of a popular fox-trot.

  "The swine!"

  Thompson had just realised the significance of what he had heard.

  There was an ugly look in his eyes.

  "I then got a job at the Ministry of Economy and later at the Ministry of Supply, and the Chief lifted me out by my bobbed hair and put me into Department Z. That's why I call him my haven of refuge. See, dearest?"

  "What's the name of the fellow in Shaftesbury Avenue?" demanded Thompson, his thoughts centring round the incident she had just narrated.

  "Naughty Tommy," she cried, making a face at them, "Mustn't get angry and vicious. Besides," she added, "the Chief did for him."

  "You told him?" cried Thompson incredulously, his interest still keener than his appetite.

  "I did," she replied airily, "and he dropped a hint at Scotland Yard. I believe the gallant gentleman in Shaftesbury Avenue has something more than a smack and an inky face to remember little Gladys by. He doesn't advertise for secretaries now."

  Thompson gazed at her, admiration in his eyes.

  "But that doesn't explain why I always want to please the Chief, does it?" she demanded. "In romance, the knight kills the villain for making love to the heroine, and then gets down to the same dirty work himself. Now the Chief ought to have been bursting with volcanic fires of passion for me. He should have crushed me to his breast with merciless force, I beating against his chest-protector with my clenched fists. Finally I should have lain passive and unresisting in his arms, whilst he covered my eyes, ears, nose and 'transformation' with fevered, passionate kisses; not pecks like yours, Tommy; but the real thing with a punch in them."

  "What on earth——" began Thompson, when she continued.

  "There should have been a fearful tempest on the other side of his ribs. I should——"

  "Don't talk rot, Gladys," broke in Thompson.

  "I'm not talking rot," she protested. "I read it all in a novel that sells by the million." Then after a moment's pause she continued:

  "He saved me from the dragon; yet he doesn't even give me a box of chocolates, and everybody in Whitehall knows that chocolates and kisses won the war. When I fainted for him and he carried me into his room, he didn't kiss me even then."

  "You wouldn't have known it if he had," was Thompson's comment.

  "Oh! wouldn't I?" she retorted. "That's all you know about girls, Mr.

  Funny Thompson."

  He stared across at her, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.

  "He doesn't take me out to dinner as other chiefs do," she continued; "yet I hop about like a linnet when he buzzes for me. Why is it?"

  She gazed across at Thompson challengingly.

  A look of anxiety began to manifest itself upon his good-natured features. Psycho-analysis was not his strong point. In a vague way he began to suspect that Gladys Norman's devotion to Malcolm Sage was not strictly in accordance with Trade Union principles.

  "There, get on with your chicken, you poor dear," she laughed, and Thompson, picking up his knife and fork, proceeded to eat mechanically. From time to time he glanced covertly across at Gladys.

  "As to the Chief's looks," she continued, "his face is keen and taut, and he's a strong, silent man; yet can you see his eyes hungry and tempestuous, Tommy? I can't. Why is it," she demanded, "that when a woman writes a novel she always stunts the strong, silent man?"

  Thompson shook his head, with the air of a man who has given up guessing.

  "Imagine getting married to a strong, silent man," she continued, "with only his strength and his silence, and perhaps a cheap gramophone, to keep you amused in the evenings." She shuddered. "No," she said with decision, "give me a regular old rattle-box without a chin, like you, Tommy."

  Mechanically Thompson's hand sought his chin, and Gladys laughed.

  "Anyway, I'm not going to marry, in spite of the tube furniture-posters. Uncle Jake says it's all nonsense to talk about marriages being made in heaven; they're made in the Tottenham Court Road."

  Thompson had, however, returned to his plate. In her present mood, Gladys Norman was beyond him. Realising the state of his mind, she continued:

  "He's got a head like a pierrot's cap and it's as bald as a fivepenny egg, when it ought to be beautifully rounded and covered with crisp curly hair. He wears glasses in front of eyes like bits of slate, when they ought to be full of slumbrous passion. His jaw is all right, only he doesn't use it enough; in books the strong, silent man is a regular old chin-wag, and yet I fall over myself to answer his buzzer. Why it is, I repeat?" She looked across at him mischievously, enjoying the state of depression to which she had reduced him.

  Thompson merely shook his head.

  "For all that," she continued, picking up her own knife and fork, which in the excitement of describing Malcolm Sage she had laid down, "for all that he would make a wonderful lover—once you could get him started," and she laughed gleefully as if at some hidden joke.

  Thompson gazed at her over a fork piled with food, which her remark had arrested half-way to his mouth.

  "He's chivalrous," she continued. "Look at the way he always tries to help up the very people he has downed. It's just a game with him——"

  "No, it's not," burst out Thompson, through a mouthful of chicken and sauté potato.

  She gave him a look of disapproval that caused him to swallow rapidly.

  "The Chief doesn't look on it as a game," he persisted. "He's out to stop crime and——"

  "But that's not the point," she interrupted. "What I want to know is why do I bounce off my chair like an india-rubber ball when he buzzes?" she demanded relentlessly. "Why do I want to please him? Why do I want to kick myself when I make mistakes? Why—Oh! Tommy," she broke off, "if you only had a brain as well as a stomach," and she looked across at him reproachfully.

  "Perhaps it's because he never complains," suggested Thompson, as he placed his knife and fork at the "all clear" angle, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh of contentment.

  "You don't complain, Tommy," she retorted; "but you could buzz yourself to blazes without getting me even to look up."

  For fully a minute there was silence; Gladys Norman continued to gaze down at the débris to which she had reduced her roll.

  "No," she continued presently, "there is something else. I've noticed the others; they're just the same." She paused, then suddenly looking across at him she enquired, "What is loyalty, Tommy?"

  "Standing up and taking off your hat when they play 'God Save the

  King,'" he replied glibly.

  She laughed, and deftly flicked a bread pill she had just manufactured, catching Thompson beneath the left eye and causing him to blink violently.

  "You're a funny old thing," she laughed. "You know quite well what I mean, only you're too stupid to realise it. Look at the Innocent—for him the Chief is the only man in all the world. Then there's Tims. He'd get up in the middle of the night and drive the Chief to blazes, and hang the petrol. Then there's you and me."

  Thompson drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.

  "I think I know why it is," she said, nodding her pretty head wisely. She paused, and as Thompson made no comment she continued: "It's because he's human, warm flesh and blood."

  "But when I'm warm flesh and blood," objected Thompson, with corrugated brow, "you tell me not to be silly."

  "Your idea of warmth, my dear man, was learnt on the upper reaches of the Thames after dark," was the scathing retort.

  "Yes, but——" he began, when she interrupted him.

  "Look what he did for Miss Blair. Had her at the office and then—then—looked after her."

  "And afterwards got her a job," remarked Thompson. "But that's just like the Chief," he added.

  "Where did you meet him first, Tommy?" she enquired, as she leaned forward slightly to light her cigarette at the match he held out to her.

  "In a bath," was the reply, as Thompson proceeded to light his own cigarette.

  "You're not a bit funny," she retorted.

  "But it was," he persisted.

  "Was what?"

  "In a bath. He hadn't had one before and——"

  "Not had a bath!" she cried. "If you try to pull my leg like that,

  Tommy, you'll ladder my stockings."

  "But I'm not," protested Thompson. "I met the Chief in a Turkish bath, and he went into the hottest room and crumpled, so I looked after him, and that's how I got to know him."

  "Of course, you couldn't have happened to mention that it was a Turkish bath, Tommy, could you?" she said. "That wouldn't be you at all. But what makes him do things like he did for Miss Blair?"

  "I suppose because he's the Chief," was Thompson's reply.

  Gladys Norman sighed elaborately. "There are moments, James Thompson," she said, "when your conversation is almost inspiring," and she relapsed into silence.

  For the last half-hour Thompson had been conscious of a feeling of uneasiness. It had first manifested itself when he was engaged upon a lightly grilled cutlet; had developed as he tackled the lower joint of a leg of chicken; and become an alarming certainty when he was half-way through a plate of apple tart and custard. Gladys Norman's interest in Malcolm Sage had become more than a secretarial one.

  Mentally he debated the appalling prospect. By the time coffee was finished he had reached an acute stage of mental misery. Suddenly life had become, not only tinged, but absolutely impregnated with wretchedness.

  It was not until they had left the restaurant and were walking along

  Shaftesbury Avenue that he summoned up courage to speak.

  "Gladys," he said miserably, "you're not——" then he paused, not daring to put into words his thought.

  "He's so magnetic, so compelling," she murmured dreamily. "He knows so much. Any girl might——"

  She did not finish the sentence; but stole a glance at Thompson's tragic face.

  They walked in silence as far as Piccadilly Circus, then in the glare of light she saw the misery of his expression.

  "You silly old thing," she laughed, as she slipped her arm through his. "You funny old thing," and she laughed again.

  That laugh was a Boddy lifebelt to the sinking heart of Thompson.

  CHAPTER IX THE HOLDING UP OF LADY GLANEDALE

  Table of Contents

  I

  Table of Contents

  "More trouble, Tommy," remarked Gladys Norman one morning as James Thompson entered her room. He looked across at her quickly, a keen flash of interest in his somnolent brown eyes.

  "Somebody's pinched Lady Glanedale's jewels. Just had a telephone message. What a happy place the world would be without drink and crime——"

  "And women," added Thompson, alert of eye, and prepared to dodge anything that was coming.

  "Tommy, you're a beast. Get thee hence!" and, bending over her typewriter, she became absorbed in rattling words on to paper.

  Thompson had just reached the third line of "I'm Sorry I Made You Cry," when his quick eye detected Malcolm Sage as he entered the outer office.

  With a brief "Good morning," Malcolm Sage passed into his room, and a minute later Gladys Norman was reading from her note-book the message that had come over the telephone to the effect that early that morning a burglar had entered Lady Glanedale's bedroom at the Home Park, Hyston, the country house of Sir Roger Glanedale, and, under threat from a pistol, had demanded her jewel-case, which she had accordingly handed to him.

  As the jewels were insured with the Twentieth Century Insurance Corporation, Ltd., Malcolm Sage had been immediately communicated with, that he might take up the enquiry with a view to tracing the missing property.

  One of Malcolm Sage's first cases had been undertaken for this company in connection with a burglary. He had been successful in restoring the whole of the missing property. In consequence he had been personally thanked by the Chairman at a fully attended Board Meeting, and at the same time presented with a gold-mounted walking-stick, which, as he remarked to Sir John Dene, no one but a drum-major in full dress would dare to carry.

  Having listened carefully as she read her notes, Malcolm Sage dismissed Gladys Norman with a nod, and for some minutes sat at his table drawing the inevitable diagrams upon his blotting pad. Presently he rose, and walked over to a row of shelves filled with red-backed volumes, lettered on the back "Records," with a number and a date.

  Every crime or curious occurrence that came under Malcolm Sage's notice was duly chronicled in the pages of these volumes, which contained miles of press-cuttings. They were rendered additionally valuable by an elaborate system of cross-reference indexing.

  After referring to an index-volume, Malcolm Sage selected one of the folios, and returned with it to his table. Rapidly turning over the pages he came to a newspaper-cutting, which was dated some five weeks previously. This he read and pondered over for some time. It ran:

  DARING BURGLARY

  Country Mansion Entered

  Burglar's Sang-froid

  In the early hours of yesterday morning a daring burglary was committed at the Dower House, near Hyston, the residence of Mr. Gerald Comminge, who was away from home at the time, by which the burglar was able to make a rich haul of jewels.

  In the early hours of the morning Mrs. Comminge was awakened by the presence of a man in her room. As she sat up in bed, the man turned an electric torch upon her and, pointing a revolver in her direction, warned her that if she cried out he would shoot. He then demanded to know where she kept her jewels, and Mrs. Comminge, too terrified to do anything else, indicated a drawer in which lay her jewel-case.

  Taking the jewel-case and putting it under his arm, the man threatened that if she moved or called out within a quarter of an hour he would return and shoot her. He then got out of the window on to a small balcony and disappeared.

  It seems that he gained admittance by clambering up some ivy and thus on to the narrow balcony that runs the length of one side of the house.

  Immediately on the man's disappearance, Mrs. Comminge fainted. On coming to she gave the alarm, and the police were immediately telephoned for. Although the man's footprints are easily discernible upon the mould and the soft turf, the culprit seems to have left no other clue.

  The description that Mrs. Comminge is able to give of her assailant is rather lacking in detail, owing to the shock she experienced at his sudden appearance. It would appear that the man is of medium height and slight of build. He wore a cap and a black handkerchief tied across his face just beneath his eyes, which entirely masked his features. With this very inadequate description of the ruffian the police have perforce to set to work upon the very difficult task of tracing him.

  For some time Malcolm Sage pondered over the cutting, then rising he replaced the volume and rang for Thompson.

  An hour later Tims was carrying him along in the direction of Sir

  Roger Glanedale's house at a good thirty-five miles an hour.

  The Home Park was an Elizabethan mansion that had been acquired by Sir Roger Glanedale out of enormous profits made upon the sale of margarine. As Tims brought the car up before the front entrance with an impressive sweep, the hall-door was thrown open by the butler, who habitually strove by an excessive dignity of demeanour to remove from his mental palate the humiliating flavour of margarine.

  Malcolm Sage's card considerably mitigated the impression made upon Mr. Hibbs's mind by the swing with which Tims had brought the car up to the door.

  Malcolm Sage was shown into the morning-room and told that her ladyship would see him in a few minutes. He was busy in the contemplation of the garden when the door opened and Lady Glanedale entered.

  He bowed and then, as Lady Glanedale seated herself at a small table, he took the nearest chair.

  She was a little woman, some eight inches too short for the air she assumed, fair, good-looking; but with a hard, set mouth. No one had ever permitted her to forget that she had married margarine.

  "You have called about the burglary?" she enquired, in a tone she might have adopted to a plumber who had come to see to a leak in the bath.

 

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