‘But would they write it down?’ she said. ‘Would they risk that?’
Abbershaw hesitated.
‘I admit that worried me at first,’ he said, ‘but consider the circumstances. Here is an organization, enormous in its resources, but every movement of which is bound to be carried out in absolute secrecy. A lot of people sneer at the efficiency of Scotland Yard, but not those who have ever had cause to come up against it. Imagine an organization like this, captained by a mind simple, forceful, and eminently sensible. A mind that only grasps one thing at a time, but which deals with that one thing down to the last detail, with the thoroughness of a Hun.’
‘Dawlish?’ said Meggie.
Abbershaw nodded in the darkness.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mr Benjamin Dawlish is one of his names.’ He paused, and then went on again with new enthusiasm, ‘Then imagine the brains of his gang,’ he continued, ‘the man with the mind of a genius plus just that one crooked kink which makes him a criminal instead of a diplomat. It is most important that this one man of all others shall evade the police.’
Meggie nestled closer to him.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Abbershaw continued, his voice hardly raised above a whisper, but intense and vehement in the quietness.
‘He must be kept away from the gang then, at all costs,’ he said. ‘So why not let him live at some out-of-the-way spot in the guise of an innocent old gentleman, an invalid, going out for long drives in his ramshackle old car for his health’s sake; but in reality changing his personality on the road and becoming for a few hours an entirely different person? Not always the same man, you understand,’ he explained, ‘but adopting whatever guise seemed most suitable for the actual detail in hand. A respectable suburban householder eager to open a small account when it was necessary to inspect a certain bank manager’s office; an insurance man when a watchman was to be interviewed; a jovial, open-handed man-about-town when clerks were to be pumped. And all these different personalities vanishing into thin air as soon as their work was done, each one of them merging into the quiet inoffensive old invalid driving about in his joke of a car.’