He got down from the car.
“Now, off you go. Don’t waste a moment!”
As the car moved off, the Chief Constable glanced along the street and then, with deliberate restraint, he lounged over to the door of the local ironmonger. All traces of hurry had disappeared. He seemed merely a casual purchaser.
“Good evening,” he said pleasantly to the man behind the counter. “You seem to stock a fairly wide selection of things, to judge by your window. I’m looking for a small drill, if you have one on the premises. Could you let me see one or two?”
The ironmonger, it seemed, kept such things in stock.
Sir Clinton examined them.
“This seems to be what I want,” he said at last. “Have you a brace to fit it?”
He fitted the drill to the brace, took out a penny and tried the drill. Then, with the hole half-bored, he seemed to lose interest in the matter.
“You don’t stock air-gun slugs, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, we do, sir. Mr. Hawkhurst of Whistlefield uses a lot of them, and he persuaded me to keep a stock of them. Nobody else has any need for them; but he buys quite a lot from time to time.”