Read The Tiger In the Smoke for Free Online Page A

beauties are remembering.’
    â€˜No.’ Mr Campion’s neat memory had turned up the reference card at last. ‘“Button your purse, shout for Nurse, I’ve brought my brace and tackle.”’
    The D.D.C.I. laughed. It was a queer little grunt, not entirely of amusement. ‘That’s a respectable one of its class. But those boys down there aren’t thinking along those lines. You can tell it by the way they’re playing.’ He thrust his vivid face close to Campion’s own. ‘“I’ll be
wai
-tin’ for you,
At
Oflag Seventy-three-ah! I’ll be
wai
-tin’ for you, don’t look out for me-ah! Lift up your froat you’ll bleed like a goat,
whoops
your adam’s apple!”’
    Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose a fraction and he did not smile. If Luke had hoped to shock he had succeeded. The words had not been inspired, but from behind them there had flashed out for an instant the reality of the thing which had been chasing them all the afternoon. He was aware of it in the street now, stark under the blanket of the gloom. For the first time that day he recognized it and it sent a thin trickle down his spine.
    â€˜Violence,’ he said aloud.
    â€˜That’s it, chum.’ Luke had seen their chance and they were edging swiftly through the traffic. ‘That’s it,’ he repeated as they reached the pavement. ‘It’s always there in London under the good temper. D’you remember in the blitz, “I wouldn’t be dead for a pound”? That wasn’t half a joke then. It tickled us, just touched the spot. Poor old George, blood streaming down his face! Laugh! I thought we’d bust our braces.’
    He paused to assist a woman to disentangle his long legs from her steel go-cart, flashed a joyous smile at her, and pressed on happily.
    â€˜I laughed myself,’ he said.
    Mr Campion listened to him gravely. He had his own brand of humour but this was not it. The band and its bellow had become hateful to him, and the fog bone-chilling and menacing.
    â€˜Oh lord, yes, there’s violence about.’ Luke’s wide shoulders were winnowing a path for himself through the crowd. ‘You can’t miss it. I shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get quite a whiff of it the moment we get inside. That shady little mouse we just caught was frightened of somebody, wasn’t he? Hullo, what’s up?’
    Campion had paused and was looking over his shoulder. He was holding up the stream and half a dozen people jostled him.
    â€˜It was nothing,’ he said at last as he moved on again, ‘at least, I don’t think so. I thought I caught a glimpse of Geoffrey Levett just then. I must have been mistaken.’
    Luke turned into a narrow archway set deep in the blank side of a new building.
    â€˜Everyone looks alike in the fog,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You can follow your own Ma home in it, certain that she’s the girl next door. If Mr Levett is about here at all he’s probably inside, asking a few important questions while we’re still getting over the road. Now, Mr Campion, we’ll have to treat this lad very gently. We’ll just turn him quietly inside out. After all, we haven’t a thing on him, have we – yet?’

CHAPTER 2
At Home
    â€”
    THE FOG WAS thicker than ever in St Petersgate Square, but there its brown folds hid no violence. Rather it was cosy, hardly cold, gentle, almost protective. The little close was well hidden even on the brightest of days. Ten years before even the enemy had not found it, and so, almost alone in the district, the quiet houses remained much as they had always been. By yet another oversight the railings round the tiny square in the centre had been spared by the scrap merchants, and the magnolia, two or three graceful laburnums, and a tulip tree, had overgrown unmolested. It was one of the smallest squares of its kind in the