The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes Page A

‘Is that dog called Radar?’
    ‘Called Radar?’ The constable, like the dog, seemed hurt in his mind. ‘That is Radar.’
    ‘I see.’ Honeybath wasn’t entirely clear about the distinction. ‘A very good name for a police dog,’ he added judicially – and perhaps with some intention of ingratiating himself with Radar as well as with Radar’s handler. He saw that his nerves were bad. For some time ahead, he was going to be easily upset.
    But at least the drive was quite short, and he presently found himself inside a police station. There seemed to be not much more than a single stuffy little room; it was furnished with a bench, and with a counter behind which a second officer, apparently a sergeant, was shuffling some papers in a dispirited way.
    ‘Gentleman has a complaint,’ the first policeman said. He might have been a hospital clerk propelling the next out-patient before a doctor.
    ‘Yes, sir. Name, please?’ The sergeant scarcely looked up. He sounded extremely bored. It was improbable, Honeybath thought, that an insignificant station like this was manned all night. These two fellows – not to speak of Radar – were no doubt thinking of packing up and going home. They wouldn’t care for his odd recital at all. Perhaps it was just as well – and perhaps, indeed, he had better abandon the notion of delivering himself of it. He’d simply explain that there had been a hitch in transport, and ask them to whistle up something to get him home. And then he could do a little thinking as to whether he wanted to have any dealings with the police after all.
    ‘Name, please?’ the sergeant repeated. He had reached listlessly for a large diary or register, and was poising a pen over it.
    ‘My name’s Honeybath.’
    ‘ Charles Honeybath?’ The sergeant had straightened up abruptly, and his free hand went out to grab a file from a corner of the counter.
    ‘Certainly. Charles Honeybath.’ Honeybath was impressed and pleased. The sergeant, despite appearances to the contrary, must take an informed interest in contemporary art. ‘The painter,’ he added. ‘As you’ve guessed.’
    ‘Quite so, sir.’ The sergeant paused, much as if verifying his facts in the dossier now before him. When he looked up, there was something slightly devious (it might have been maintained) about the movement of his head. Could the first constable (Honeybath’s rescuer, as Honeybath thought of him) have taken this for a signal or a sign? He had been standing gloomily warming himself before a small cheerlessly black stove; now he made his way casually to a position in front of the door. So did Radar. And Radar at once began to make disagreeable panting noises. It was almost as if the sagacious brute discerned a villain in the offing. ‘Would you oblige me, sir,’ the sergeant went on, ‘by turning out your pockets?’
    ‘What the devil do you mean?’ Strange things had been said to Charles Honeybath during the past fortnight, but surely this was the most outrageous of the lot.
    ‘Now, now – I think we understand each other very well.’ The sergeant’s tone had suddenly become almost benevolently indulgent. ‘Just routine, wouldn’t you say? Here on the counter, you remember – and you get a receipt at once. Keep your handkerchief. And any 5p bits. They’re useful to get coffee out of the machine at headquarters. Or tea or cocoa, for that matter. Very comfortable they make you there, nowadays.’
    ‘Good God, officer!’ Honeybath’s indignation was extreme. ‘Are you taking me for some habitual criminal?’
    ‘Now, now – no need to jump to conclusions. Just the contents of your pockets.’
    It came to Honeybath that he was in the clutches of an extremely stupid man – the kind of policeman that private detectives make rings round in romances of crime. And it was almost worse than being in the clutches of extremely clever men – which he suspected to have been his case until a couple of hours before. It came