The Tiger In the Smoke by Margery Allingham Page A

Galloway faded into the recess which contained his desk, and the three in charge of the case were to all intents and purposes alone in a matter of seconds.
    Oates took off his ancient raincoat and folded it carefully over the back of a chair.
    â€˜Superintendent Yeo is tied to his telephone, all his telephones,’ he said, his cold eyes resting on Luke for a moment, ‘so I thought I’d slip down and see you myself, Charles.’ He had a sad voice. The words came slowly, like an old schoolmaster’s. ‘You may have a little more on your plate than you realize. How far have you got?’
    Luke told him, reeling out the essential details with a minimum of gesture and the precision his training had taught him. The Assistant Commissioner listened, nodding gently from time to time as if he were hearing a well-learned lesson. When it was done he picked up the envelope and turned it over.
    â€˜Humph,’ he said. ‘He must have been waiting for Duds outside here. Probably kept an eye on the doors from the foyer of the hotel opposite.’ Mr Campion spoke thoughtfully. ‘When we let Duds go, he must have followed him, taken him into the first pub, tried to get the tale out of him, failed, given him his office address, and then – what?’
    â€˜Duds was windy because he wasn’t on his own – wasn’t working on his own, that is,’ Luke supplemented, ‘so as soon as he got a chance he hooked it. Levett went after him, pausing to pay his score, which argues he wasn’t fighting mad, and missed him because Duds doubled back up Pump Path. We know where Duds finished, but what happened to Levett? Where is he now?’
    â€˜Your Superintendent would like to know that, because that apparently is what three-quarters of the people who are still influential in this bedevilled old town keep telephoning and asking him.’ Oates made the announcement with a sour little smile. ‘Mr Levett seems to have planned quite an old-style evening: telephone calls half over the world, an after-dinner speech at a banquet, and a business interview with a gentleman from the French government in his flat after that. None of his friends can find him and they want to know why we can’t.’ He glanced at the clock over the desk. ‘He’s staying out late, isn’t he, for such a busy chap?’
    Mr Campion slid off the table where he had been sitting, his hands in his pockets, his foot swinging.
    â€˜Medical opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Duds was kicked,’ he said. ‘I don’t see Levett doing that, you know, I really don’t.’
    Old Oates looked up. ‘Do you see him killing at all, Mr Campion?’
    â€˜Frankly, no.’
    â€˜But on the other hand, do you see him cutting all his appointments like this? They’re important appointments, every one of them.’
    â€˜It’s odd.’ Campion was frowning. ‘Geoffrey is a punctilious, solid sort of chap, I should have said. On the sober, stolid side. Unadventurous, even.’
    â€˜That’s what most people think.’ The Assistant Commissioner’s grey face was puckered into the faint smile which showed he was enjoying himself. ‘But he’s not, you know. I’ve been hearing about him. He’s Levett’s Ball Bearings and one or two other very sound old-fashioned little companies, and he’s a very rich man. But we don’t like riches in this country these days, and what we don’t like we get rid of. I’ve been making some inquiries tonight and I hear that when Levett came back from the war he found that after he had provided for all the people whom he felt had a genuine claim on his family and estate – his pensioners and so on – he found he had thirty-seven pounds five shillings and threepence per annum to live on himself after taxation had been paid. There were two courses open to him. He could spiv around with an army