"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——"