Dover and the Claret Tappers

the general impression was still extremely creditable.
The last thing that Scotland Yard’s most accomplished lead swinger and scrimshanker wanted to hear was that he was looking fit for duty. Dover twitched his little black moustache and tried a touch of pathos. ‘Haven’t you brought me any bloody grapes or anything?’
MacGregor hadn’t.
Dover brushed aside the lame excuses. ‘Oh, give us a fag, then!’
MacGregor hadn’t been fool enough to bring his little handbag to the hospital so he produced his cigarettes from his pocket in the normal way and soon had Dover puffing smoke all round the room and covering the top sheet with ash. Dover’s hand closed like a vice round the cigarette packet.
‘I’ll hang onto this,’ he said.
MacGregor sighed. ‘Don’t they come round with one of those trollies where you can buy things, sir?’ he asked without much hope.
‘Got no money,’ explained Dover, slipping the cigarettes under his pillow. ‘Those thugs robbed me, you know. Nicked every penny I had on me – apart from the pound note I keep in my sock for emergencies. I reckon somebody ought to reimburse me.’
Very slowly, so as not to frighten his lord and master, MacGregor was pulling his notebook out. ‘You might try claiming it on your swindle sheet, sir,’ he suggested helpfully. ‘How much was it?’
‘Sixty-four pence!’ said Dover promptly. Too promptly! With a bit more pause for thought, he admonished himself crossly, he could have upped that to thousands of pounds.
MacGregor cautiously extracted a pencil. ‘What exactly happened, sir?’
Dover looked blank.
‘When you were kidnapped, sir. Commander Brockhurst was rather keen that we should get cracking on the investigation without delay.’
It would be an exaggeration to say that these unkind and thoughtless remarks brought the tears to Dover’s eyes, but they certainly brought a howl of protest to his lips. ‘Is there no bloody consideration?’ he yelled. ‘Damn it all, I’m supposed to be ill! By rights I ought to be lying down under sedation in a darkened room, not sitting here being third-degreed by some young whelp of a jack who isn’t dry yet behind the bloody ears!’
There was a great deal more in the same vein but eventually Dover succumbed to the temptation to star in his own drama. He wasn’t indifferent, either, to the sweetness of revenge on the cheeky bastards who’d abducted him. ‘Tuesday night, it was,’ he began, leaning back amongst his pillows and closing his eyes. ‘I’d been working late at the Yard, clearing up the paperwork and things.’ His eyes snapped open and he glared accusingly at MacGregor. ‘Doing your blooming work, as it happens, laddie!’ He stabbed out a grubby-nailed forefinger. ‘Do you realise that, if you hadn’t gone skiving off on one of these stupid courses of yours, none of this might ever have happened?’
MacGregor refused to feel guilty. ‘You left the Yard about eight o’clock, didn’t you sir? What happened then?’
‘I was just walking to the station to catch a train home when, after I’d gone a hundred yards or so, this taxi pulls up at the kerb just ahead of me. The door opens and a chap sort of half leans out and shouts, “Can I give you a lift, Dover?” Well, naturally, I shouted “Yes!” back and put on a bit of a spurt so’s not to keep the chap waiting.’
MacGregor was amazed at such consideration for the convenience of others but he made, of course, no comment.
Dover sank back and closed his eyes again. ‘So, I start to get into the taxi – see? – and that’s when it struck me that there was something fishy going on.’
‘Oh?’
Dover yawned. ‘Hm.’
‘What?’
‘Eh?’
MacGregor counted up to ten and thus managed to keep his hands to himself. ‘What made you think something was wrong, sir?’
Dover opened his eyes and regarded MacGregor resentfully. ‘I ought to be in bed, you know,’ he grizzled.
‘You are in bed, sir!’
Dover scowled.
‘What was the “something fishy”, sir?’ MacGregor displayed bulldog tenacity but he was no match for Dover.
‘Can’t remember!’ said Dover with an evil grin. Pretty boy would have to get up a hell of a lot earlier in the morning to catch him napping! ‘Now, where was I?’
MacGregor hoisted the white flag. ‘You were just getting into the taxicab, sir.’
‘That’s right! Well, it was dark, you know, and I was sort of trying to see who this chap sitting there was. Then, suddenly, I felt something poke me in the back. Another fellow had come creeping up behind me! He gave me another poke and told me to get right into the taxi or he’d blow my bloody brains out.’ MacGregor looked up. ‘Can you recall his exact words, sir?’
‘You’ve a hope! You try going around with a gun stuck in your back and see how much you remember.’
‘How about the gun, sir? Did you happen to notice what make it was?’
Dover shook his head. ‘Soon as I got in the taxi, they jumped me, didn’t they? I fought ’em off, of course, but they overpowered me in the end and I was bound hand and foot and dumped on the floor. Then the lousy yobboes shoved some sticking plaster over my mouth and dragged a mucky old sack over my head and that was that. I dare say,’ added Dover with a heavy sneer, ‘that a clever young devil like you would have burst free and escaped in a couple of bloody shakes, but I couldn’t quite manage it.’
MacGregor very sensibly ignored the jibe and concentrated on extracting as much information as he could from Dover’s rather hazy reminiscences. ‘So there were three men involved at this stage, sir?’
‘Two!’ Dover corrected him nastily. ‘Why don’t you wash your lugholes out? One on the back seat and one with the gun.’
‘There was another man driving the taxi, though, wasn’t there, sir?’
Dover was frankly disgusted at such finickiness. ‘Oh, well, if you’re going to count him . . .’
MacGregor stared rigidly at his notebook. One day, he promised himself, one day he was going to grab that