Chief Inspector Heat respected his own private character so consistently that he took especial pains to avoid all the police constables on point and patrol duty in the vicinity of Brett Street.

This precaution was much more necessary for a man of his standing than for an obscure Assistant Commissioner.

Private Citizen Heat entered the street, manoeuvring in a way which in a member of the criminal classes would have been stigmatised as slinking.

The piece of cloth picked up in Greenwich was in his pocket.

Not that he had the slightest intention of producing it in his private capacity.