Clifford descended to the great corridor on the main floor. Here he met captains and lieutenants and first-grade detectives—old friends, with whom, until the events that had sent him out of the Department, he had worked for close upon a decade. They treated him with a respect that, coming after his scene with Mary Regan, was soothing to his rasped spirit. The very surroundings, too, affected him—begot in him a formless longing; in a way it was like coming back to one’s home town.
Here, too, he ran into little Jimmie Kelly. With Jimmie he descended to the pistol range in the subcellar, and for half an hour they practiced with the regulation police revolvers, which recoil like ancient shotguns—their targets those little posters seen everywhere, headed “Wanted for Murder,” over the heart of the pictured fugitive an inch circle of white paper to serve as bull’s-eye. And then they practiced with Jimmie’s pistol, a .25 automatic so tiny that it could lie in a closed hand and not be seen.
“Wish you were back here with us, Bob,” remarked Jimmie when Clifford announced that he was due up in the Chief’s office. “It would be great stuff—working with you again!”
There was hearty sincerity in Jimmie’s voice; and the vague longing begot by it was still upon Clifford when at length he was seated beside Commissioner Thorne’s desk.
“Clifford,” said the Commissioner briskly, his lean, Scotch-Irish face alive with purpose, “I’m going to lay all my cards, face up, on the table. I asked you to meet me down here, instead of uptown, for the sake of the effect on you. That’s why I made you wait, and asked you to visit about. I wanted you to feel the old tug of Headquarters.”
“I guess I’ve felt it all right, Chief.”
“That’s good. Clifford, six months ago I asked you to become Second Deputy Commissioner. For your own reasons you refused. I hope you’ve changed your mind, for I’m now again asking you to take the place.”
To be Second Deputy Chief of New York’s Detective Bureau!—Clifford felt a leaping thrill—a swift reaction from the heaviness and bitterness which had been upon him since his scene with Mary Regan. He considered for a moment. The controlling reason for his previous declination, his knowledge that Mary Regan would refuse him if he continued official police work because she believed she would interfere with his career—this reason Mary Regan herself had just wiped out. He had lost enough because of her. Here was big work to do. Here was a big career.
Clifford looked up. “I accept, Chief,” he said with an energy almost fierce. “And I’m glad and proud to accept. And I’ll give the job the best that’s in me.”
“Bully for you!” cried Thorne, seizing his hand.