CHAPTER VIII
GLADYS NORMAN DINES WITH THOMPSON
I
"TOMMY," remarked Miss Gladys Norman one day as Thompson entered her room through the glass-panelled door, "have you ever thought what I shall do fifty years hence?"
"Darn my socks," replied the practical Thompson.
"I mean," she proceeded with withering deliberation, "what will happen when I can't do the hundred in ten seconds?"
Thompson looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"My cousin Will says that if you can't do the hundred yards in ten seconds you haven't an earthly," she explained. "It's been worrying me. What am I to do when I'm old and rheumaticky and the Chief does three on the buzzer? He's bound to notice it and he'll look."
Malcolm Sage's "look" was a slight widening of the eyes as he gazed at a delinquent. It was his method of conveying rebuke. That "look" would cause Thompson to swear earnestly under his breath for the rest of the day, whilst on Gladys Norman it had several distinct effects, the biting of her lower lips, the snubbing of Thompson, the merciless banging of her typewriter, and a self-administered rebuke of "Gladys Norman, you're a silly little ass," being the most noticeable.
For a moment Thompson thought deeply, then with sudden inspiration he said, "Why not move your table nearer his door?"
"What a brain!" she cried, regarding him with mock admiration. "You must have been waving it with Hindes' curlers. Yes," she added, "you may take me out to dinner to-night, Tommy."
Thompson was in the act of waving his hat wildly over his head when Malcolm Sage came out of his room. For the fraction of a second he paused and regarded his subordinates.
"It's not another war, I hope," he remarked, and, without waiting for a reply, he turned, re-entered his room and closed the door.
Gladys Norman collapsed over her typewriter, where with heaving shoulders she strove to mute her mirth with a ridiculous dab of pink cambric.
Thompson looked crestfallen. He had turned just in time to see Malcolm Sage re-enter his room.
Three sharp bursts on the buzzer brought Gladys Norman to her feet. There was a flurry of skirt, the flash of a pair of shapely ankles, and she disappeared into Malcolm Sage's room.
II
"It's a funny old world," remarked Gladys Norman that evening, as she and Thompson sat at a sheltered table in a little Soho restaurant.
"It's a jolly nice old world," remarked Thompson, looking up from his plate, "and this chicken is it."
"Chicken first; Gladys Norman also ran," she remarked scathingly.
Thompson grinned and returned to his plate.
"Why do you like the Chief, Tommy?" she demanded.
Thompson paused in his eating, resting his hands, still holding knife and fork, upon the edge of the table. The suddenness of the question had startled him.
"If you must sit like that, at least close your mouth," she said severely.
Thompson replaced his knife and fork upon the plate.
"Well, why do you?" she queried.
"Why do I what?" he asked.
She made a movement of impatience. "Like the Chief, of course." Then as he did not reply she continued: "Why does Tims like him, and the Innocent, and Sir James, and Sir John Dene, and the whole blessed lot of us? Why is it, Tommy, why?"
Thompson merely gaped, as if she had propounded some unanswerable riddle.
"Why is it?" she repeated. Then as he still remained silent she added, "There's no hurry, Tommy dear; just go on listening with your mouth. I quite realise the compliment."
"I'm blessed if I know," he burst out at last. "I suppose it's because he's 'M.S.,'" and he returned to his plate.
"Yes, but why is it?" she persisted, as she continued mechanically to crumble her bread. "That's what I want to know; why is it?"
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.