Gently Sahib Read Free

HE AC WANTS to see you, sir.’
    Ferrow was the second person to give him the message. Earlier, as Gently had come in from parking his car, the desk sergeant had interrupted a phone call to tell him.
    ‘What about?’ Gently had grunted.
    ‘Don’t know, sir,’ the sergeant’d said.
    Now, in response to the same question, Ferrow gave the same answer.
    Gently stared at him grumpily before stumping upstairs to his office. So the AC wanted him, did he! Had he forgotten about Gently’s leave?
    Because he studied the papers over breakfast and was expert at sifting news stories, Gently was reasonably certain nothing big had come up. There’d been a bank job at Croydon, which was none of his business; a stabbing at Manchester, who wouldn’t call London; and a suspected poisoning at Slough.
    Was it the poisoning they were going to stick on him, probably a lengthy routine chore? If it was . . . !
    He growled to himself, aimed a kick at the door of the outer office.
    Inside sat Inspector Dutt, typing a report with two fingers. He grinned moonishly at his superior and stopped typing to say:
    ‘The AC—’
    ‘I know!’ Gently snapped. ‘Next thing he’ll give it to the papers. What’s it about?’
    ‘About a tiger, chief.’
    ‘About a what?’
    ‘About a tiger.’
    Gently closed the door of the outer office and leaned against it massively. He took out his pipe and struck a light for it, jetted smoke towards the ceiling.
    ‘Dutt,’ he said. ‘Is this the silly season?’
    ‘Yes, chief. Bang in the middle of it.’
    ‘And he wants to see me about a tiger?’
    ‘About a man about a tiger, he said, chief.’
    ‘Just that and nothing else?’
    ‘He said it would be right up your street. He sounded a bit tickled about it, said you wouldn’t want to miss it.’
    ‘How nice of him,’ Gently said. ‘Only this isn’t my day for tigers.’ He puffed. ‘It wouldn’t be a leg-pull, Dutt?’
    ‘Don’t know, chief.’
    ‘It isn’t my day for them either.”
    But the Assistant Commissioner was rather vain about his sense of humour. In his student days he’d been one of a band who’d dug a hole in Oxford Circus. Nobody had interfered for three days, when the traffic was jammed as far as Holborn, and five separate authorities were exchanging bitter memos.
    And now he’d been paging Gently ever since Gently set foot in the place . . .
    ‘What’s that report you’ve got there?’
    ‘This? The Blazey case, chief.’
    ‘Hurry it up and I’ll take it to him. Then we’ll see what it is with the tiger.’
    He swept through into his office, scowled at it, tossed his hat at the peg. Apart from a return sheet his in tray was as empty as it ought to be just now.
    For the next forty-eight hours he’d be available for conferences, routine, perhaps a fill-in job; but unless the heavens opened they shouldn’t wrap a major case round his neck. And the heavens hadn’t opened, or he’d have smelt it out in the papers. This was a leg-pull . . . another sample of the AC’s dubious humour.
    The phone went.
    ‘Gently.’
    ‘Ah, Gently. Did you get my message?’
    He couldn’t wait, even, till Gently condescended to appear!
    ‘Dutt’s getting out his Blazey report. I thought I’d bring it with me.’
    ‘Never mind the Blazey case, that’s finished. I want you along here directly.
    ‘Gently – are you there?’
    ‘Mmn,’ Gently said. ‘I’m here.’
    ‘I’ll expect you right away then, OK? Drop everything.’
    Gently laid the phone fastidiously in its cradle again. He whistled a tune. From the outer office came the tortuous chatter of Dutt’s typing. Gently rose, went to watch Dutt, who frowned as he felt Gently watching him.
    ‘Just signing off now, sir,’ Dutt said. ‘Won’t be another minute.’
    Gently shrugged and walked over to the window.
    He began to think of his fishing plans.
    The Assistant Commissioner raised his glasses.
    ‘So glad you could make it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking round for