Lord Wrexborough
    Great Cumberland Place, V. 1
    “To introduce 719.  W.”

Some moments of silence followed; then: 

“Seven-one-nine,” said Kerry in a high, strained voice.  “Why seven-one-nine?  And why all this hocus-pocus?  Am I to understand, sir, that not only myself but all the Criminal Investigation Department is under a cloud?”

The Assistant Commissioner stroked his hair.

“You are to understand, Chief Inspector, that for the first time throughout my period of office I find myself out of touch with the Chief Commissioner.  It is not departmental for me to say so, but I believe the Chief Commissioner finds himself similarly out of touch with the Secretary of State.  Apparently very powerful influences are at work, and the line of conduct taken up by the Home office suggests to my mind that collusion between the receivers and distributors of drugs and the police is suspected by someone.  That being so, possibly out of a sense of fairness to all officially concerned, the committee which I understand has been appointed to inquire into the traffic has decided to treat us all alike, from myself down to the rawest constable.  It’s highly irritating and preposterous, of course, but I cannot disguise from you or from myself that we are on trial, Chief Inspector!”

Kerry stood up and slowly moved his square shoulders in the manner of an athlete about to attempt a feat of weight-lifting.  From the Assistant Commissioner’s table he took the envelope which contained his resignation, and tore it into several portions.  These he deposited in a waste-paper basket.

“That’s that!” he said.  “I am very deeply indebted to you, sir.  I know now what to tell the Press.”

The Assistant Commissioner glanced up.

“Not a word about 719,” he said, “of course, you understand this?”

“If we don’t exist as far as 719 is concerned, sir,” said Kerry in his most snappy tones, “719 means nothing to me!”

“Quite so—­quite so.  Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which I ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only be compared to that employed by the Russian police under the Tsars.”

Half an hour later Chief Inspector Kerry came out of New Scotland Yard, and, walking down on to the Embankment, boarded a Norwood tramcar.  The weather remained damp and gloomy, but upon the red face of Chief Inspector Kerry, as he mounted to the upper deck of the car, rested an expression which might have been described as one of cheery truculence.  Where other passengers, coat collars upturned, gazed gloomily from the windows at the yellow murk overhanging the river, Kerry looked briskly about him, smiling pleasurably.

He was homeward bound, and when he presently alighted and went swinging along Spenser Road towards his house, he was still smiling.  He regarded the case as having developed into a competition between himself and the man appointed by Whitehall.  And it was just such a position, disconcerting to one of less aggressive temperament, which stimulated Chief Inspector Kerry and put him in high good humor.